


Sight of the Sun: Complete Series

by theshipsfirstmate



Series: Fifty Good Years [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Hiatus fic, olicity roadtrip
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 16:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4398218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Finale: Oliver and Felicity hit the road, but for all they've left behind, there's still a lot of trouble they've brought along with them. </p><p>(Originally published as a multi-work series, condensing to one fic to make this part of a larger series.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pack Light

_A/N: Special thanks to the anon who sent[Bre](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Bre) the [tip about the earrings](http://dust2dust34.tumblr.com/post/118918932904/in-the-porsche-scene-felicity-is-wearing-the-same) and [sammieathome who pointed out the limited storage space in a Porsche](http://sammieathome.tumblr.com/post/118909385136/so) for their inspiration. You started this whole thing.  
_

_Legal Disclaimer: I don’t even own my own chill after that finale._

 

**Pack Light**

It takes Felicity a good hour to convince Oliver to leave her bed the next morning, and another thirty minutes or so to actually get him out of her apartment. Not that she’s complaining about round four, five, up against her front door (because seriously, those arms?), but she knows that if they’re going to get on the road and down the coast before sunset, they need to get moving like, now. So she hustles him out the door, pausing for a long, wet goodbye kiss that she feels in her kneecaps long after he turns and runs down the stairs, and gets to packing.

“Packing” is probably generous for what she actually does, dazedly tossing clothes into her huge roller bag, taking long pauses to consider the woman with the huge grin that she sees in the mirror. She’s so happy, she doesn’t even recognize herself. It makes her think of him and how happy he is too, how happy she’s learning they can be together. And every time she catches a glimpse of her own moony eyes, she drifts even higher into the clouds.

She showers and does her hair and makeup, adding the finishing touch when she opens the bottom drawer of the ornate jewelry box that had been a gift from her grandmother. Inside the drawer is one single pair of earrings, the pair she had worn on their first date. The earrings he had pulled gently from her ears after she woke with a start on the cold metal table in the Foundry. She remembers realizing that the explosion had knocked her out long enough to change his mind about something. She remembers half-heartedly answering Diggle’s questions while she watched Oliver walk dejectedly to the sink and rinse the delicate jewelry off, wiping the stones and metal clean of her blood, before returning to place the earrings in her hand, refusing to meet her eyes. She remembers a kiss in the hospital that was goodbye, but it doesn’t hurt nearly as much now, drowned in the kisses that have followed.

Despite the time she spends remembering, she’s actually finished packing with minutes to spare, impatiently deciding to go downstairs and meet him at the curb. For one rushed nostalgic moment, she feels so much like the little girl that always got to the bus stop half an hour early, terrified of missing out on a day of school. That girl has a new definition of terrified now, but she also has a new definition of love, and Felicity’s knuckles go white on the handle of her bag when the reason behind both pulls up in a shiny black Porsche with the top down, looking at her like she’s everything he’s ever wanted.

When she gets to the bottom of the stairs, though, she notices that his face has scrunched into a frown, his brow furrowed, and her heart drops into her stomach with dread. She’s still wary of this happiness, she realizes in a hot panic that burns its way through her brain, still afraid that it could be torn away in the blink of an eye like it has so many times before. Then she realizes he’s frowning at her suitcase.

“Um, we might have a problem,” he tells her warily, popping the hood on the Porsche to reveal an inconveniently tiny trunk that’s already half-stuffed with his own duffel bag. She breathes out a sigh of relief so strong it crooks his eyebrows in concern and she wants to explain, but she knows that this isn’t the time to panic about when their vigilante lives will inevitably come calling. In fact, this is the time to get on the road as fast as possible, to avoid getting waylaid by the past before they even get a chance to start.

“Ugh, I so don’t want to try and repack this,” she confesses, rolling her big bag back and forth on the curb, catching his eye. “I don’t even know what’s in here. I was a little...distracted.”

“Distracted?” he repeats with a flare, finally coming around the hood to wrap his arms around her waist and kiss her deep. She’s wearing flats for the car ride, and when he pulls her up towards him, she’s off her toes in seconds. Her arms wrap tight around his neck, but less to  keep her up and more just because she wants to. He breathes his teasing words against her parted lips. “Distracted by what?”

“Distracted by the thought of you getting back here to kiss me like that,” she tells him, sliding down his body as she regains her footing, trailing hands down the hard front of his abdomen. He hitches in a breath and she continues. “Distracted by the thought of you kissing me like that in about twelve different states...”

“Leave the suitcase,” he cuts her off, pressing his forehead against hers.

“What?” she looks up at him with incredulous eyes, only to see his have deepened to a shade she recognizes from last night.

“Just leave it,” he says again, adding with a grin, “I mean, you’re not going to need clothes, not really.”

“Oliver,” she pulls back with a flush, voice teetering on practicality around the lump that’s suddenly formed in her throat.“I’m going to need some clothes, some of the time."

“I’ll buy you whatever you need,” he tells her. “I’ll buy you a new dress at every place we stop, if you want.”

“That’s crazy,”

“I will,” he says, solemn. “Whatever you need Felicity.”

“Not to be indiscreet, but while your offer is generous and the Porsche is... impressive,” Felicity suddenly recalls, clearing her throat with a little teasing look, “how are you planning to pay for all of this?”

“Borrowed some money from Thea,” he confesses with a shrug. “She told me to get you something pretty. I’d say this is pretty much exactly for what she had in mind.”

“Oliver, I can’t just…”

_“Whatever you need, Felicity.”_

And he does.

He buys her a new cardigan when he tears a hole in the white lace one she’s wearing, pressing her up against a tree at their first rest stop and sucking a hickey on her neck that the new sweater doesn’t even begin to cover.

He buys her an evening gown the color of the red wine they drink at a vineyard in Coast City, and it’s lucky, because she accidentally splashes a little on herself when he runs his hand up her thigh in the middle of dinner.

He buys her ridiculously expensive designer sunglasses when she decides to wear her contacts one day and she spends the afternoon teasing him that they’re not to shield her from the sun, but from the smile he hasn’t been able to wipe off his face. She’s taken to teasing him mercilessly about his happiness, wondering aloud if he’s going to catch bugs in his teeth, ever since he asked her if he could “say something strange.” He laughs like she's joking, but she can't help herself. His joy is overwhelming, it's the only thing she can think about.

He buys her a bright blue bathing suit that matches her eyes, with ties on the sides that make his forefinger and thumb rub together in that way she’s always noticed, but he never even gets his chance, because “come on, Oliver, it’s a private beach.”

He buys her a red dress that reminds him of the one she wore on their first date and she puts her hair down and wears the earrings and this time, when he carries her out, her legs are wrapped around his waist.

He buys her a plush bathrobe at the MGM Grand in Vegas when they stop to see her mom and it’s the most clothing she wears in their hotel room all weekend.

He buys her a baseball cap he swears she was wearing in one of the many versions of this dream he keeps telling her about, the one that makes her hands and heart clench with need and want and memories, the one where they ride off together. The snap-back isn't her style at all, but it’s worth it for the way he bumps his head on the brim when he leans in to kiss her nose.

In the end, the thing she probably wears the most is the earrings, (more than once, they’re the only thing she’s wearing) because damn if their luck hasn’t done a 180 in the past year. When they finally return to Starling City, the only things she ends up keeping are those earrings and the last thing that he buys her: a ring. Platinum, diamonds and emeralds that he slides on her right ring finger as they watch the sun set on their last night outside of town. He whispers to her as their shining eyes meet, swearing a hundred promises in one vow he knows he’ll keep.

“Whatever you need, Felicity.”


	2. Some Scars (From a Life That Used to Trouble Me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the second day of their road trip, Felicity sees Oliver's newest scar for the first time. (Based on a Tumblr prompt from knottedyarn.)

**Some Scars (From a Life That Used To Trouble Me)**

_"For once, there is nothing up my sleeve_  
_just some scars from a life that used to trouble me."_   
_-fun. "Sight of the Sun"_

On some of the stops, she insists on buying him things too, because as much as she’s enjoying this spontaneous “buy whatever you need” thing, she wants to spoil him as much as he’s spoiling her. She wants to be able to show him how good he deserves to feel, and not just in the bedroom. Although, that is definitely, definitely proving to be an effective method.

The first time she does it is on their second day of driving. They’re finally starting to hit the first real beach towns of the West Coast, and when he insists on getting her a ridiculously expensive pair of surf shop sunglasses so she can wear her contacts as they drive with the top down, she counters by buying him the cheapest, most ridiculous looking, bright pink Hawaiian shirt, hiding it from him in the bag until they reach the parking lot, where she tosses it at his chest, watching him unfold the material quizzically.

She expects surprise, maybe even that special laugh of his that’s blessedly been making more of an appearance in the last two days, and she gets both, but he completely shocks her when he starts to unbutton the monstrosity, grinning at her disbelieving face as he pulls the navy v-neck he’s wearing over his head.

When he turns from her to toss the old shirt into the convertible, she sucks in a breath and watches his back tense visibly as he realizes what she’s seen.

“Oliver?” she breathes the question more than asks it. “What...what is that?”

“Just another scar, Felicity,” he tries to brush her off, but she steps closer. Her stare is fixed on the angry stylized arrowhead that mars his back, but out of the corner of her eye she sees him hang his head a little and her full heart aches for him.

“Ra’s did this?” She raises a hand, but stops just short of touching his tortured skin, running her fingers down his side instead. It makes him shiver just a little, but he still won’t look at her. She can’t believe they’re doing this in a surf shop parking lot, can’t believe it’s taken her this long to notice.

“Part of my transformation,” he tells her then. “He felt it necessary for Al Sah-him to bear a unique mark.”

“So he _branded_ you?”

“It’s nothing,” he tells her, false and hollow, the saddest he’s sounded since she first sat in the passenger seat of the Porsche. “I’ve had worse."

She doesn’t even hear his attempt at placating her, though, she’s too busy assessing his injury like she’s done countless times before. The mark is about half-healed, Felicity surmises, thanks to the less-than-up-to-date medical facilities in Nanda Parbat and a few weeks of being covered up by The League's stifling armor. Thankfully, it doesn’t look infected, but the scabs must be painful, how in the world did she not notice?

“Felicity,” Oliver says, inches from her face, eyes pleading, and she realizes that, in her concern, she hadn’t noticed that he’s turned back to face her. “It’s just another scar.”

She meets his eyes and she wants to push him, wants to make him count his scars and tell her about every single one, so he can understand how each pulls at a different string of her heart. But this isn’t the time or the place for that kind of confession. So she sets her sights on levity.

“Leave it to you to find the one guy who makes the Russian mafia look pretty tame,” she tells him, tapping his pectoral, letting her fingers rest for a moment on the star etched in his skin.

He smiles a little but his eyes are still dark so she insists he keep the ugly shirt on as she drags him to a restaurant with a beachfront patio and makes him have wine with lunch and dance with her in the sand. Later, she takes her time unbuttoning that ugly Hawaiian shirt and they fall asleep in another crappy motel room, tangled up in each other.

 

* * *

 

She accidentally falls asleep with her contacts in, which is a bad idea, except for the fact that, after a few blinks when she wakes up, she can see him clearly. He’s lying on his stomach facing her, a heavy arm banded over her shoulders. She ducks underneath his bicep as stealthily as she can and props herself up on her elbow, curiously surveying the new mark on his back, letting her finger graze over the skin around it.

Her heart is full of so much love, has literally been swelling, Grinch-style for the past few days since they saved the city and drove off into the sunset. But as she glances over the angry brand forming on Oliver’s back and the older exit wound, she finds a kind of rage that she sometimes forgets she’s capable of, and for a brief, horrible second, she is beyond grateful that this time, Ra’s had been the one to get a sword through the gut. Even if Oliver had to be the one to do it.

She realizes too late that his eyes are open and he’s watching her intently, somehow at least mildly aware of what’s bubbling inside her. It’s uncanny, the read he’s got on her, but it comforts her to know that at least it goes both ways. Still, she doesn’t think twice before telling him the truth.

“Sometimes, I feel terrible for thinking that your scars are sexy,” she confesses. “When I first started working with you, with The Hood, I kept catching myself staring at you on the salmon ladder. I got a little worried that I had some kind of fetish or something.”

He pulls his arm down to wrap around her hip, giving her a small sleepy smile that she returns before snapping back to seriousness, needing to tell him this, needing him to know at least this for sure right now.

“But I’ve realized something,” she explains, voice shaking just a little as she presses a kiss to his shoulder. ”The scars you had before, they made you the man that you are. The man I fell in love with.”

She notices his eyes soften at that, but he stays quiet, like he knows she’s not done.

“But the scars he gave you,” she says, voice softening on a shudder. She drops her eyes to his chest, fingers grazing over the place where the Demon’s Head had driven his sword clean through him. “Those just remind me of how he almost took you from me, and I want… I hate…”

She trails off, breathing hard, and he wraps himself fully around her, pressing his face into her neck before threading one arm up her back to cup her head.

“Hey, hey,” he whispers into her hair, pressing kisses along her scalp. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

“I’m so glad you killed him,” she whispers. “I’m sorry that you had to do it, but I’m so glad that it’s done. Because otherwise…”

“I should have just killed him when you told me to the first time,” he interrupts her, and she’s glad because there was no possible way she was finishing that sentence. “I could have saved us a lot of trouble.”

“Did you seriously just make a joke right now?” she admonishes, eyes widening as she pulls back from his embrace. She slaps his chest in mock anger but she’s unable to hold back her grin, until he kisses it right off her face.

“I’m still laying down the law,” she informs him when they come up for air. “No new scars.”

“Yes ma’am,” he grins at her before furrowing his brow. “But wait, what if I step on a tack or slam my thumb in the car door or something? What about accidents?”

“Sorry, no,” she tells him, doing her best to mock seriousness. “No new scars. Period.”

“That’s going to be tough to enforce.”

“Well, then,” she says, a little spark in her eye. “I guess I’m not going to be able to let you out of my sight.”

“Fine by me, I won’t let you out of my sight either” he counters, pulling her over so her body is draped over his and kissing her so deep his next words don’t fully register. “Not until I’m eighty-six years old.”


	3. Everything I Want From This Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On one stop on their trip, Oliver and Felicity have "the talk" about kids.

**Everything I Want From This Life**

_“I start to think you’ll make a beautiful mother,_  
_I like to think I have everything I want from this life.”_  
_-fun. “Sight Of The Sun”_

When he asks her, they’re trying their best to brush the sand from their bodies and belongings, having learned the hard way that the private beach wasn’t so private. They hadn’t been quite “in flagrante” yet, thank god, but they had been damn close, so hot and heavy that it took a few seconds for either of them to register the screeching sound.

Oliver had already basically been on top of her, but at the sound, he braced himself on instinct, shielding her body even more completely, and for once she didn’t totally curse his protective tendencies. Because she realized at about the same time that she was essentially topless and that the screeching was coming from a pair of young children racing over the dunes, followed closely behind by their exasperated parents.

The kids paid them no mind, headed for the water, but Oliver had flashed the slightly shocked couple a sheepish, apologetic look as Felicity giggled and wrapped herself in the blanket, grabbing her phone as they scrambled back the car to Google if there were was a word for lesser stages of “delicto” that one could be caught in.

So, when he asks her, she’s thinking about interruptions and disaster and not getting a ton of sand in this beautiful Porsche.

“Do you want kids?”

It’s like all the breath has been forced from her chest and she uses it to huff out a little laugh.

“God, no.”

Because that’s the right answer, right?

They’ve had their share of their hiccups so far on this trip, it hasn’t been all sunsets and Porsches (though there’s mercifully been a lot of that, too). The transition hasn’t quite been seamless, he keeps treading back into the uncertainty that’s plagued their last year together, doubting himself just a little here and there.

He keeps saying he’s not sure he can be what she needs. She keeps assuring him that he already is.

It’s been pretty easy for her to handle so far. They talk, she wins, they have a bunch of sex about it, lather, rinse, repeat. But this one feel different, almost immediately.

Dinner that night is quieter than usual. He still holds her hand across the table (by day three she’d given up trying to explain how much harder it was to eat that way), but their conversation is stilted and he barely meets her eyes and by the time they get back to the motel room, she can’t help herself.

“Oliver?” She asks him as they start to undress, separately. “Was that the wrong answer, earlier?”

She expects him to play dumb, to skate around it a bit. She’s fully prepared to point out his stubborn tendencies, to force him to talk about their issues. But then, he sits down on the edge of the bed, unbuttoning his shirt, and he does just that.

“Not if it was the truth.”

“Really?” It’s so easy to read his face and she’s genuinely shocked at what she sees. “You want kids?”

He just shrugs, still refusing to meet her eyes.

“I’m think I’m more surprised that you don’t.”

“It’s not something I’ve ever really…considered,” she tells him honestly. “Growing up, you know, the objective was _not_ getting pregnant. Then, between working with you and falling in love with you, I just didn’t… It didn’t seem like something that was going to happen for me.”

“Felicity, I…” She belatedly realizes how he’s taken her words, how they’ve cut him to the quick, and she moves to stand between his legs, placing her hands on his now-bare shoulders.

“No, Oliver, this isn’t supposed to be something for you to torture yourself about,” she continues. “I honestly figured even if there was a world where we ended up together, that it wouldn’t be in the cards, I didn’t think you’d want it. I didn’t think you’d believe that it could work.”

“Diggle makes it work.”

His comment is off-hand but it draws a memory from her that makes her pull away from him and take a few steps back.

“Diggle _was_ making it work,” she grits out, “until the League of Assassins kidnapped his wife and left his baby daughter alone in their apartment.”

He’s quiet for a long moment after that, and she lets him brood, because honestly, that’s one he deserves.

“I left Maseo there with Sara,” he says softly, eyes fixed on the hotel carpet, and she can tell he’s not trying to make an excuse, just that he needs her to know. “He was there until the second you guys came in. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her. I couldn’t.”

“I know that I have to forgive you for that,” she says, still not touching him. “Because it’s going to be a long time until John can and you don’t deserve it from the both of us. But...when I realized what you had done, when I saw John realize, Oliver…it was so horrible.”

“It was,” he agrees, his voice cracking. “She started crying as we took...as we left. And I…”

His voice finally breaks and he drops his head to his chest in a silent sob.

“Oh, Oliver.” This is why they can’t just be the couple who runs away on a road trip, she thinks. Because, for as much as they’ve left behind, there’s still so much trouble they’ve brought along with them.

She finally sits next to him on the bed, reaching for his hand, but that must not be enough for him because he wraps himself around her, hauling her back until they’re propped up against the pillows. He’s still got his pants on and she’s still in the fancy underwear he bought for her on their last stop, but he pulls the comforter up around them, and takes her hand, lacing his fingers through hers and studying the way they intertwine.

“When I was younger, there was...a situation,” he says softly. “But she lost the baby.”

Her rational brain wonders if it’s wrong in a way, for her to feel so heartbroken at this revelation. But then her heart takes over, flooding her with devastation at the knowledge that there was yet another part of him, however small, that had been lost forever.

“I’m so sorry,” she breathes, kissing the back of his hand.

“I know it would have been bad,” he confesses. “I’m sure I would have fucked it up. But I think about it a lot. I thought about it constantly on the island. How maybe, if I had a kid, I never would have gotten on that boat in the first place. How different things could have been.”

“You can’t think like that,” she counters, almost too quickly. “That’s too much weight for a baby to carry. It can’t be about redemption.”

Her heart races with the realization that she’s maybe not talking about the child he almost had all those years ago.

“A baby is supposed to be about love,” she continues. “About two people putting the best parts of themselves together and making something even better.”

“And you’re so sure you don’t want one?”

“No, I’m not,” she says honestly, breathing a tiny sigh of relief as his expression changes subtly from heartbroken to hopeful. “I thought that’s what you needed to hear. I thought we were doing another round on the Oliver Queen Carousel of Guilt.”

He smiles sadly at her and tilts his head down to peck her lips. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Hey, yes you do,” she puts her hand on his cheeks, scratching at his stubble, and he closes his eyes in contentment for just a second before looking down at her with love and hope and every other good thing. “I want every part of you. Forever.”

“And If that means kids,” she continues, “well, those are going to be some damn lucky kids."

“Every part of you,” he repeats, and it’s not lost on them that these words feel more like vows than anything that was said in Nanda Parbat. “Forever.”


	4. Thus Far You Are The Best Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At a vineyard in Coast City, Oliver's wife pays them a surprise visit.

**Thus Far You Are The Best Thing**

_“So, despite what I’ve done, I pray to God that we can move on,_  
_‘cause thus far you are the best thing that this life is yet to lose.”_  
_\- fun. "Sight of the Sun"  
_

Nyssa shows up in Coast City, because of course she does. There are few places that the ancient black leather of the League would stand out more than the seaside vineyard where they’re staying for the night.

They’ve just finished what might be the best dinner Felicity’s ever had (despite the fact that she nearly spilled pinot noir all over her pretty new dress when he ran his hand up the thigh slit under the table) and they’re rushing their way back to the private cabin when suddenly, she appears, in full League gear, among the grapevines. _Oliver’s wife._

For all they’ve talked about in the days since they left Starling City, this is one topic they have fastidiously avoided. And, if she’s honest with herself, it’s been eating at her. Because it’s not like they’ve waited to do...anything. He nearly took her up against a tree at their first rest stop and since then there’s been, well, a lot of stuff she doesn’t feel great about doing with someone else’s husband. Even if that someone else was forced to marry him in the first place and literally could not want him less, there’s still something about it that makes her stomach turn a little. Afterwards, of course.

Felicity’s ready to tamp down her nervous nausea with another snarky comment about a honeymoon (though her brain is suddenly flooded with Fruit Ninja jokes) but she doesn’t get to say anything as Nyssa speaks first, both with her words and with the sword that she pulls from its sheath and presses to Oliver’s throat.

“Give me one reason why I should not kill you where you stand.”

Oliver stands stock still, but manages to use the hand that he’s holding to maneuver Felicity behind him, shielding her fully.

“I can think of a couple...” Felicity starts, but when Oliver’s hand tightens on hers, she can actually feel it trembling and she falls silent.

“First, you rob me of my vengeance by killing my father,” Nyssa continues. “Then, you mock Sara’s memory by appointing Al Sa-Her as the new Demon’s Head.”

“Al Sa-Her...” Felicity trails off, realization hitting her like a freight train. “Wait a second. You made Malcolm Merlyn the head of the League of Assassins?”

“It was part of the deal,” Oliver grits out and her heart drops like a stone when she realizes he had no intention of telling her this. Not until his _wife_ showed up to ruin their blissful escapism.

“Your ‘deal’ benefited only yourself and a snake of a man, who killed a woman you once claimed to love,” Nyssa sneers, tossing a weighted look at Felicity as she says the last part, like a warning.

“And an entire city full of innocent civilians,” Oliver bites back. “Plus, it also benefits you.”

“How so?”

“Another part of the deal,” Oliver squeezes Felicity’s hand tight before he says this next part, “was annulling our marriage.”

“Impossible,” Nyssa barks out, her tone almost mocking. “That was a traditional League wedding. Al Sa-Her cannot nullify the ceremony, no matter his title.”

“You’re right,” he agrees. “But he doesn’t have to. You married the Heir to the Demon: Al Sah-him, Warith al Ghul. Those men no longer exist. As far as Malcolm and League law are concerned, neither does the marriage. It was…”

“...part of the deal.”

In better circumstances, Felicity thinks, there would be a lot more joy from both women at this news. The vice in her chest loosens, but only a little. Nyssa, at least, lowers her blade from his throat in celebration.

“This is meant to be some kind of consolation?”

“It’s the best I can do right now,” Oliver tells her, tugging Felicity forward to stand beside him again and running his free hand over his throat. “Malcolm was the only one who could help me pull things off, the only way I could think to keep as many people alive as possible.”

He looks over at her then, and the most she can offer is a stilted, shocked nod.

“And what am I to do now?” Nyssa continues, looking far less confident than she did moments ago.

“You know the League better than anyone. You’ve studied them from the inside for years,” Oliver tells her, and Felicity breathes the tiniest sigh of relief that he actually has a plan this time around, and that he’s sharing it. “Watch them through the transition. Study their loyalties. And when the time is right, take your rightful place as the Demon’s Head.”

“You are saying I should attempt to kill the new Ra’s al Ghul?” She sounds skeptical, but looks intrigued.

“I’m saying I don’t think it would be as difficult as killing the last one,” he admits darkly. “And you’d have help, if you wanted it.”

“From whom?” Nyssa counters. “The team of proxies you have left alone to patrol your city? Laurel is nearly competent, but the rest are little more than armed civilians.”

“They won’t be alone for long,” he says with a warning tone. “And don’t forget, Nyssa, one of those ‘civilians’ is now, technically, the rightful Heir to the Demon.”

Nyssa looks as shell-shocked as Felicity feels. _Thea_ , she remembers belatedly. Thea is now not only a vigilante in her own right, but the only living descendant of Ra’s al Ghul, the next in line for Demon’s Head. A lump forms in her throat when she realizes that he’s also right about something else. They’re going to have to go back.

“I do not begrudge the two of you your happiness,” Nyssa says, finally dropping her eyes to the ground and sheathing her sword. “But I will never forgive this.”

“You never have to,” Oliver tells her. “The offer stands. Just let me know how I can help.”

 

* * *

 

“Talk to me, Felicity,” he pleads when they finally make it back to their cabin, the mood decidedly colder than either of them had hoped after their romantic dinner.

Felicity is sure that other couples have arguments start the same way, and for a brief second, she allows herself to wish for the problems of normal people. That he would be pleading with her because his eyes lingered too long on the waitress’ ass or because she wants to know if she can call him her boyfriend or not, instead of begging to talk about how his ninja assassin not-really wife had appeared out of thin air and informed her that her maybe-boyfriend had handed the keys to a group of trained killers to a sociopath and mass murderer.

_Can_ she call him her boyfriend, by the way, now that he’s not officially married? What’s the word for what he is to her right now? Man-friend? Companion?

“I just, I feel like we’re back in that alleyway outside Verdant again, you know?” she tells him softly once she’s collected her thoughts. “I’m so glad, so unbelievably happy that you’re not married, just like I was then that you weren’t dead. But yet again, there’s something crushing all that happiness out of me. And that something, _yet again_ , is Malcolm Merlyn.”

“I wasn’t lying when I said I’d help Nyssa kill him.” he says, clasping her palms in his and locking his gaze on hers. Her eyes burn with the unshed tears she’s trying to fight back and she thinks she sees the same sparkle in his. “I will if it comes to that.”

“I don’t want that to be something that you have to do,” she tells him honestly.

Because even though there is possibly no one else in the world who wants Malcolm Merlyn dead more than Felicity (besides maybe Nyssa), she knows some twisted part of Oliver would never forgive himself for it.

He’s given up so much already to protect his sister, and keeping her broken bits of a family in tact seems so important to him, for reasons Felicity can’t quite grasp. As a latch-key kid who was living on her own by 16, she’s always been a bigger supporter of “the family you make,” and she’s not sure if she’ll ever understand the leeway Oliver has provided Malcolm Merlyn since finding out that he is part of Thea’s genetic makeup.

“Your sister's the Heir to the Demon,” she recalls after a small tangent. “I’m actually not sure if this makes her more or less safe.”

“She’ll be okay.” Oliver sounds less convincing than she knows he wants to. “Malcolm will hold up his end of the bargain.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Felicity snaps, an extra drop of vitriol for each promise she knows Merlyn has broken in the past. “How do you know for sure that any of us are safe?”

“Because he knows that if he doesn’t, there will be consequences,” he tells her darkly. It’s as close to the Arrow as she’s seen him since they crossed the Starling City limits. “He may hold the title, but Malcolm and I both know who is the rightful Demon’s Head. I handed him the ring. I killed the last Ra’s al Ghul. He’s not naive enough to think that I couldn’t do the same again.”

She sits down on the bed, heaving a sigh.

“I still don’t like that you trusted him.”

“I had to to keep you safe, all of you.” His voice is a little desperate, as he paces past her, shrugging off his suit jacket and unbuckling his suspenders. “I needed him to make the plan work and he and I wanted enough of the same things.”

“He only ever wants the same things when he has everything to gain and you have everything to lose,” she bites off coldly. “And so you left it up to him to inoculate us from a deadly bioweapon on the honor system because what? You were busy with your bachelor party?”

Her mind races with bitterness for long enough that she misses how his has clearly gone in a different direction, until he drops to his knees in front of where she's sitting on the edge of the bed. He puts his hands on her thighs and looks at her hard enough to melt all the ice inside of her.

“I never thought seriously about marriage,” he says after a long moment, his thumbs rubbing absently over the high slits of her dress. It’s less heated than his touch at dinner, but no less intimate. “Laurel tried to talk to me about it once or twice before I got on that boat. And after, since I’ve been back, I thought there was just no way…”

He shakes his head like he’s the clearing cobwebs of bad memories and looks back at her, as focused and open as she’s ever seen him.

“I didn’t ever want to get married, until the moment I actually was and it was all wrong,” his voice scrapes at the walls she’s been trying in vain to put up around her heart. “The wrong place, the wrong story, the wrong woman walking down the aisle.”

_He’s on his knees_ , her mind finally registers. She takes in a shuddering breath and presses her hands to where his are still grasping her thighs, lacing their fingers together as he continues.

“Felicity, I’ll never forgive myself for letting you think that you were dying as I was marrying someone else,” he says, eyes shining right at her. “But I’ll live the rest of our lives proving to you that you’re the only woman I want to be my wife.”

And she kisses him then, because she kind of has to, and it’s not until he pulls back to swipe at her cheeks with his thumbs that she realizes she’s crying.

“God, please don’t,” he pleads, pulling her up when he stands and pressing his lips to the salt on her cheeks, which makes her cry just that much harder.

“I’m sorry,” she forces herself to catch a breath, lacing her hands together behind his head and pulling him close. “It’s just...it’s also the first time we’ve said anything about going back.”

“I don’t want to, Felicity,” he says sadly, dropping his forehead to hers. “You have to know that. I wish we could stay away forever, just the two of us. But..”

“I remember,” she interrupts him softly, smiling with a memory. “You’re someone who will do whatever it takes to save his sister.”

Realization flashes across his face, along with a grin she’s so grateful for, and her brain finally registers what the appropriate word is for what they are. Somewhat tellingly, it’s the one they’ve been using all along. _Partners_.

“And the second thing?” he asks, inches from her lips.

“I love you.”


	5. You Keep The Light On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity wonders what Oliver dreams about now that they’ve literally made his dream come true.

**You Keep The Light On**

_“For everyone I’m out to prove wrong, you keep the light on._  
_The only one, you know me better than the truth.”_  
_\- fun. "Sight of the Sun"  
_

Felicity wakes the morning after Nyssa’s unwelcome visit in the Coast City vineyard to an empty bed, and as much as she tries to reassure herself - his stuff is still here, there are no messages on her phone and no sign of any struggle - she panics a little. The bed is cold, which means he’s been gone for a while. The man is an actual space heater, she’s realized, especially when he wraps himself around her, which he does often.

It’s strange. For all the thought she’d given to _sleeping_ with Oliver throughout the years, she’s discovered she didn’t give much consideration to actually sleeping with Oliver. And it’s kind of a disaster, to be honest. He’s a thrasher, and a blanket hog, and a furnace, which exasperates her to no end, because _if he’s so hot, what does he need all the blankets for, anyway?_

She remembers that he just raised his eyebrows at her the first time she had tried to scold him for that, taking her righteous indignation in for a long moment before tackling her back to the bed, growling in her ear, _“I’ll keep you warm.”_

When he still hasn’t returned after forty minutes, she works herself into a full panic. She tries to busy herself with packing, they’re set to leave Coast City this afternoon, but all she can think is that he’s gone, and every horrible thing about sharing a bed with him pales in comparison to waking up without him. That realization socks her in the gut, because it’s only been a few weeks that they’ve actually been sleeping together in any capacity, and she’s been successfully waking up alone for years before him.

At 25, Felicity has lived a whole lifetime of awful lessons about what it means to count on someone else for your emotional well-being and she’s horrified to find that the carefully-constructed protections around her heart have been blown to bits without her even realizing it was happening. She’s known that she loves him for a while now, has wanted him for even longer, but something about this crazy escapist intimacy has obliterated her defenses and she’s terrified to find herself _needing_ him in this heart-stopping kind of way.

She only realizes she’s been holding her breath once she hears the lock turn in the door and sighs in relief. Thankful that her back is turned to him, she drops her head to her chest to heave some deep breaths and wipe away a few stray tears as he swings it open softly.

“Felicity?” He sounds worried and a little broken and she knows that it’s because he can read her as well as she can read him.

“Yeah?” Her voice cracks into a thousand little pieces and then all of a sudden he’s banding his arms around her from behind, wrapping himself around her like he can hold it all together.

“Hey, hey,” he whispers against her hair. “What’s wrong?”

“I just..” She doesn’t want to tell him the truth, but she also knows that there’s no choice to make. “I woke up and you weren’t...and I just panicked a little. I’m sorry. I’m fine.”

“I’m sorry,” he presses his mouth behind her ear and down her neck. “I’m so sorry. I had a dream, I had to walk it off. I didn’t think you’d be up this early.”

She turns in his arms and the haunted look in his eye tells her all she needs to know about his dream. It was a bad one.

“The same one?” She thinks about bringing him coffee that night at Palmer Tech, remembers how her heart tore into smaller bits of confetti when he told her how he had dreamed every night of their great escape or horrible demise.

“No,” he breathes out, shaking his head. “I haven’t had that dream since we left the city.” He smiles to himself and then at her and adds, “Maybe because we made it come true.”

“What do you dream about now?”

“Some days they’re good, and some days they’re bad,” he huffs out, face returning to stoic neutral, but softening when she puts her hands on his cheeks. “But, for the first time, they’re about the future instead of the past.”

 

* * *

 

That first morning, he tells her that he dreamed of their wedding, and her heart slams twice in her chest before plummeting when she realizes he won’t elaborate and won’t meet her eyes.

“Oh, just tell me,” she tries to tease it out of him. “It can’t have been as bad as your first one.”

“Felicity, please,” he whispers desperately. “I’ll tell you...sometime. Just, drop it for now, okay?”

She knows he must have seen something horrible, knows she should force him to share it, but they went twenty rounds over Nyssa and Malcolm Merlyn last night and honestly, she’s a little exhausted from her mini panic attack. So she offers him a mulligan. He can keep this one to himself, but he’s got to tell her about all the rest. Everything he dreams. Every morning.

“All of them?"

“Every part of you, remember?”

“Okay,” he agrees simply, and that’s that.

They settle into a little routine. He’s up before her, always, and when he goes for a run, or to grab them breakfast, he writes down the exact time he’ll be back on the little hotel notepad that sits on the nightstand. By her count, he always walks in the door at that exact time, down to the minute. She tells him after the first day or two that he doesn’t have to keep doing it, that she’s fine, but she’s secretly thrilled when he ignores her.

Sometimes he opens the door right as the clock changes, like he’s been outside waiting. Sometimes she hears his footsteps pound down the hall as he races to make it, but he’s always right on time. Oliver Queen was never on time and The Arrow never used his ninja-like stealth to chase his own happiness, but this new someone he’s becoming pulls off both in a way that makes her chest swell every time he comes back to her.

And after he comes back exactly when he said he would, he tells her what he dreamed that night. He tells her about spending time with Thea in street clothes and in leathers, he tells her about fighting alongside Laurel as she uses the Canary Cry, he tells her about reuniting with Roy and he tells her about tracking down Damien Darhk.

He tells her his dreams, and sometimes she doodles the happy ones down on the sheet of paper from the notepad, marking the date and location next to his time stamp and saving the scrap inside the hardcover book he bought her on one of their early stops, but she hasn’t gotten around to reading.

 

* * *

 

Unsurprisingly, most of the things he dreams about are realistic and practical. Nearly all of the good ones involve her and a sizeable chunk of those make her blush fully down her chest. But the few that are pure nonsense amuse her to no end.

“I dreamt that Digg was a gingerbread man,” he rasps into her ear one morning after a particularly late night and she feels his stomach rumble against her side. “Sara was a chocolate chip cookie.”

“I told you,” she mock-scolds, laughing at the imagery, “you should have eaten something before bed.”

He just grins at her lasciviously. “I did, don’t you remember?”

When he swallows her gasp with his lips and rolls over to pin her to the mattress, she knows he’s not making it out for a run that morning.

 

* * *

 

His next dream about John is far less sweet. When he comes back bruised from a boxing gym near Gateway City one morning, he tells her about being in a crowd back in Starling, and seeing his friend (his partner, his brother) out with his family. Except dream-Digg didn’t know him, wouldn’t believe him, and, when Oliver got pushy, beat the shit out him.

“We could call him, you know.”

“I’m not going to do that, Felicity.”

“Don’t tell me you think you’re too macho for a phone call.”

“I just…” he trails off, and she wants to press but knows it’s not the right time. “I don’t want to rush him.”

She sets up a Skype date with Lyla that afternoon anyway, under the not-so-false pretense of needing to see Sara every few weeks, lest the Digglet grow up too much while they’re away. She calls from the road, so he won’t feel pressured to participate much (and also so he can’t run away).

“Little lady!” Felicity squeals when the camera connects. “Oh my god, Lyla, she’s so big!”

“I know,” Lyla smiles. “She’s nearly walking. She’s going to run this place soon!”

“She looks great. So do you. Retirement agrees with you.”

“Not sure about that, I’m starting to get itchy,” Digg’s wife admits. “But it’s been great being home with her.”

“She said her first word,” John’s voice booms through the background as he finally enters the frame behind his little girl, who smiles at the sound.

“She did not,” Lyla sighs at him in exasperation, before turning back to Felicity. “She didn’t.”

“She absolutely did, she said Digg,” her friend insists proudly. “My girl’s a genius."

“I’ve already got her first laptop all set up in my mind,” Felicity tells him. “You just say when.”

Digg just shakes his head, smiling for a second before turning his serious face on her, nearly squinting at the phone’s camera.

“You good, Felicity?” he asks. “Both of you? You’re happy?”

“Crazy happy, Digg,” she tells him with a grin that splits her face, switching hands on the phone and reaching down to settle her free one over Oliver’s on the gear shift. “We're really good, both of us, we’re..we’re good."

Her burly big brother chuckles a little at her enthusiastic babble before handing the phone back to his wife.

“Good,” she hears him say as a goodbye. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“Any idea on a return ETA?” Lyla’s always good for that no-nonsense kick in the pants. Felicity’s certain that 99% of people wouldn’t pick Diggle to be sappy sentimental one in the relationship, but they’d be wrong.

“Not yet,” she confesses, feeling Oliver’s hand turn into hers and squeeze gently. “We’ll call you next week.”

“Sounds good,” Lyla says, signing off and holding Sara’s hand up to wave. “Be safe.”

“You too,” Felicity replies, hearing Oliver croak out the same beside her.

He squeezes her hand tight twice before pulling it back to shift gears quickly and she swipes her newly-freed fingers at the moisture collecting at the corner of his eye. “Big baby.”

They’re not through the fire yet, but they’re holding hands as they step across the coals.

 

* * *

 

She has to wake him one night, in a swanky hotel in Metropolis, because he’s thrashing so hard he nearly tosses her from the bed.

“It was Thea,” he gasps, when she finally shakes him aware. “When we talked to Nyssa, I didn’t ...”

He trails off, taking a long pause and a few deep breathes.

“I spent so much time trying to make sure she was safe,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “Then, all I wanted was for her to be alive. Alive, and away from that place. And now she’s the goddamn Heir to the Demon.”

“What happened?” She asks about his dream, because she hasn’t yet figured out the real-life predicament of his sister, and hates dwelling on unsolved mysteries.

“She died...again,” he spits the words out. “We had to go back to Nanda Parbat. Malcolm put her in the Pit, he was eager this time. And she didn’t come up.”

He clears his throat, and she reaches up to lay a hand on his chest.

“She didn’t come up, so I...I went in after her. I had to swim so hard, down hundreds of feet, but then I got to the bottom, and...they were all there.”

“Who?"

“Everyone. Thea, Tommy, Sara, my parents,” he chokes out. “Everyone who died.”

_Everyone who died because of me._ He leaves that part unspoken, but the anguish is plain on his face and she props herself up on her elbows to run a hand through his disheveled hair, pulling on it a little so he meets her eyes.

“None of their blood is on your hands, Oliver,” she tells him sternly. “I will always be sorry that you had to lose so many, but I am certain that your survival does not make you a failure or a fault.”

His survival has meant the rescue and long happy lives of countless others, she reminds him, pressing a kiss to every scar she can find from where she lays at his side. “It’s what made you a good man, and a hero, and a loyal friend... and the man I love.”

 

* * *

 

She’s annoyed when he shakes her awake the next morning before the sun’s even fully up. Well, at first she’s panicked, remembering the horrors of yesterday, but when she sees his dopey grin and realizes everything’s okay, she slides back to annoyed.

“Oliver, it’s so early,” she whines. “Let me sleep.”

But he can’t. Because he’s too excited to tell her about a little girl with blue eyes and glasses. The calm certainty with which he describes every detail of their daughter makes her heart slam against her ribcage as she traces the words on the Holiday Inn Express notepad.

“And she’ll have your remarkable brain, and your blonde hair…”

“It’s going to have to be your blonde hair, remember?” She interrupts, tugging at her frayed strands to show him her roots, which definitely need touching up, as soon as she finds the time to care. “Besides, she’s got to have some stuff that’s yours.”

He smiles wide with a hint of surprise, like he’d forgotten for a second that he was part of the equation, and she has to catch her breath. It’s so unfair, she thinks, not for the first time, how much the horrors of his recent life have robbed the world of that smile.

“I’ll teach her how to shoot arrows,” he announces proudly, and she barks out a laugh and slaps his stupidly big bicep.

“You absolutely will NOT teach her how to shoot arrows,” Felicity scolds. “Not until she’s old enough to drive at least.”

“What?” he whines. “Why not? Don’t even try and tell me you’re not going to teach her how to hack.”

“Of course, I’ll teach her to hack,” she scoffs. “That’s just good sense in the Information Age. Your thing is an imprecise medieval hunting method.”

“It’s not imprecise when I do it,” he growls into her ear, waggling his eyebrows and she squeals out a laugh, suddenly fine with tabling the rest of this conversation for later.

Not surprisingly, they end up checking out of that hotel just under the wire, and are ten miles down the road when Felicity panics.

“We have to go back,” she looks at him wide-eyed and at first he smiles back at her, thinking she’s kidding.

“I’m serious, Oliver, turn the car around.”

“Wha..?” he asks, but he’s already starting a U-turn on the thankfully empty stretch of road. “Felicity, what’s going on?”

“I forgot something.”

“What could you have forgotten?” he asks, incredulous. “Felicity, I told you, I’ll get you whatever you need.”

“Just...drive faster."

She refuses to answer any more of his questions, but he guns the engine at a respectable clip and has them back at the hotel in seven minutes. She bolts from the car as soon as it’s in park, leaving him sitting dumbfounded in the driver’s seat and grabbing the keycard that’s still in her back pocket. She doesn’t exhale until she opens the door to their room and sees that the maids have mercifully not made it through yet.

And there it is. Tangled in the comforter they had swept off the bed. The notepad, where she had scribbled his silly, sappy details about their daughter. She holds it to her chest for a second and closes her eyes, opening them only at the sound of him barging in after her.

“Felicity, what the hell?”

“Sorry,” she stammers. “I just, forgot...this.”

He takes the paper from her and reads it and when he looks back at her, his eyes are soft and sad, but also crinkled with confusion.

“Why’s it so important?” he asks, and she shoots him a disbelieving glare. “I mean, I know why it’s important. But...I could always just tell you again.”

“I just want to keep them,” she drops her head and her tone and tries to get around him to leave, but he won’t let her.

“You _panicked_ , Felicity,” he says, soft but firm, blocking the door. “Tell me why.”

“These dreams of yours, they’re some kind of future for us,” she admits, everything spilling out in a rush that turns into a full-on babble. “Even if only you see them. Even if they never come true. I just want to keep them in case…”

She stops on a raspy inhale and watches him close for the moment he realizes the true panicked question she’s silently begging him not to answer.

_What if we don’t get these chances?_

“Felicity…”

“I already lost you once,” she doesn’t let him finish, her shaky voice growing louder for strength. “And this trip, this whole thing is a dream. But in reality, we don’t know how long we’re going to have, what kind of future we’re going to get.”

She pauses to take a deep breath and he just nods, taking one of her hands in both of his and pressing a kiss to her palm.

“So I want to keep these.”

“Okay,” he says simply, holding her hand tight until they get back out to the Porsche and are on their way again.

 

* * *

 

Felicity wakes before him just once, on the day they’re set to return to Starling. It doesn't really count, because it's just a cat nap before they hit the road, but she relishes the opportunity to watch him sleep, tracing her fingers over the star on his pectoral with the strangest sense of foreshadowing, watching the gems in the ring on her hand catch the early sunlight.

She still can’t believe any of it. That they’re going back, that they were gone so long in the first place. He’s surprised her continuously these past few weeks, and never more so than last night, as they watched the lights of Starling from a mountaintop outside the city. In all of her 25 years, she’s certain there hasn’t been a happier moment than when he slipped the band onto her right ring finger and whispered into her ear, a promise that sounded like a vow.

She feels him shift into wakefulness beneath her, watches his eyes blink open and then crinkle at the corners when he smiles at her sweetly. His voice is low and rough when he speaks and she can feel it beneath her palm.

“No dreams," he says, sleep scratching at his throat. She figures she might not get a better time

“Will you tell me about the wedding dream?” she pleads, voice a little smaller than she’d like it to be. “Just, tell me what happened. What went wrong?”

He pauses for a long time, staring up at the ceiling like the right answer might be written up there. She’s steeled herself for the worst, but she’s not prepared at all for what he tells her.

“ _Nothing_ ,” he says, looking at her with clear, worried eyes. “It was perfect. Everyone was there and I was happy and you were…”

His eyes well over and she puts her hands on his cheeks and smooths her thumbs to wipe away the tears that fall.

“God, Felicity,” he says, voice overflowing. “You were so beautiful.”

She pulls herself up to press her forehead to his and a soft kiss to his lips and she thinks about how funny fate is, to lead a brainy girl from Vegas into the arms of this warrior of a man. This man, who has faced down super villains and tasted his own death, but only truly fears happiness. This man who has fought wars and saved cities, but is only ever daunted by the tremendous capacity of his own heart. This was her fate when she loved Oliver Queen, her fate when she loved The Arrow, and looks to be her fate now as she realizes, not for the first time, how desperately she loves who he is becoming.

She resigns herself to it forever a year and a half later, in a courthouse in Starling City, when they make another one of his dreams come true.


	6. I Try Not To Speak Superlatives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The event that turns their conversations about returning to Starling from generalities to specifics is when Ray Palmer literally blows the roof off the building.

**I Try Not To Speak Superlatives**

_“You know I try not to speak superlatives,_  
_but it’s impossible to you”_  
_-fun. “Sight of the Sun”_

They talk about it here and there after Nyssa’s surprise visit, but the event that turns their conversations about returning to Starling from generalities to specifics is when Ray Palmer literally blows the roof off the building.

They’re having dinner at a little dive on the side of the highway, outside Coast City, when they see it on the news. “EXPLOSION AT PALMER TECH, CEO MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD.” Felicity freezes, frantically grabbing her cell phone from her purse and turning it on to a flood of texts and voicemails. Unplugging’s become something of a surprising habit of hers on this trip, keeping her phone off, living in the moment, and it’s been wonderful but she hates herself for it for a few violent moments just then. It’s only once she makes certain that there are no messages from Ray, no last communications or cries for help, that she can breathe again.

She gives herself one week to figure it out. She talks to Laurel and Digg and Lyla and learns that security cameras show Ray working in the lab up until the moment of the explosion, but so far no one’s found anything that indicates he’s part of the wreckage. No body parts, no DNA, nothing.

Even the Starling City media, perhaps wary of having to retract yet another prematurely published obituary, seems hesitant to declare Ray Palmer dead. Felicity works her way through some of the more plausible theories, but keeps finding fault with each one. A meta-human from Central City? (One whose only evil powers were what, blowing up labs?) A kidnapping staged like an explosion? (Seems like more trouble than it’s worth and there haven’t been any demands.) Maybe Ray finally mastered that crazy shrink-ray tech she sort of remembers him babbling about? (Come on, it’s more plausible that he just up and vanished. Right?)

She’s so busy trying to solve the mystery, she misses the way Oliver’s demeanor shifts as the week progresses, until it’s harshly presented to her in one fell snap.

“We should just go back,” he bites at her one day as she babbles about miniaturization, a healthy dose of annoyance laid into his tone. “You’re not going to figure it out in a hotel room hundreds of miles away. We should just go back.”

“Oliver…” she turns to him, and watches the hard lines of his consternation soften immediately at her confusion.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and it sounds like he’s gritting his teeth. “I know this must be hard for you. I know you loved him.”

His words hit her like a rubber bullet to the chest. Not piercing, but enough to knock the wind right out of her.

“You think I loved him?”

“I…” He just looks down at his hands, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. She hasn’t seen him do that since they left Starling. She’ll realize later what it means, but her immediate knee-jerk reaction is pure indignation.

“Is that why you’re being so weird about this?” Really, she’s angry and scared and sad about a mystery she can’t solve, but he’s right here for her to be mad at. “This is like, some kind of twisted jealousy?”

“No, Felicity, I…”

“I need some air.” She’s aware that it’s childish to just storm off, but she slams the door behind her before he has a chance to follow. Even though she hears him call her name again, she’s more than a little relieved when he doesn’t chase her down.

 

* * *

 

Her head’s buzzing with so much fury and confusion, it’s not until she’s half a glass of sirah deep at a wine bar the Uber driver recommended that she realizes her phone is buzzing as well.

“Hello?”

_“Ms. Smoak?”_

“Gerry?” She realizes she shouldn’t be surprised to hear from her old EA. In fact, she probably should have contacted him along with the others back home when she heard the news. He’s basically been running the company for her over the last few months, making excuses when she missed important meetings, keeping up with her correspondence, covering for her when she bailed on important conference calls. He deserves a lot of credit.

_“Yes, hello, Ms. Smoak?”_

“How are you?” she asks. “I’m sure things have been…”

She trails off but it’s okay, because the EA is still talking a mile a minute.

_“Yes, things have been hectic, to say the least,”_ he admits breathlessly. _“How are you doing, uh….personally?”_

Apparently, Gerry deserves a _lot_ of credit.

“I’m okay,” she blushes. Embarrassed over the phone. She’s pretty much falling apart. “I’m fine, thank you.”

_“Good,”_ Gerry says, but it’s weird, because he doesn’t really sound like he means it. _“We need to discuss the timeline for your takeover as CEO.”_

“My takeover?” she sets her wine glass down with more force than she means to and turns a couple of heads. “No, Gerry, I’m sorry, I resigned from Palmer Technologies. Ray knew all about it. I’m not even in town.”

_“Mr. Palmer did mention something about that, before the uh...accident,”_ the EA says nervously. _“Unfortunately, he also filed a signed contract that names you as CEO.”_

“Signed contract,” she stammers, bewildered. “Signed by whom?”

_“By you, Ms. Smoak.”_

She has a vague memory of scripting her name on a piece of paper on Ray’s back.

“So you’re saying…”

_“Yes,”_ Gerry finishes, almost apologetically. _“You are currently, pending the board’s approval, the acting CEO of Palmer Technologies.”_

She downs two more glasses of wine after promising to call him back tomorrow and wanders down the boardwalk for a while, lost in even more emotions than when she first set out. It’s not until she notices the sun setting that she realizes how long she’s been gone, grabbing a cab that’s dropping a couple off for dinner and heading back to the hotel.

“Okay, Oliver listen,” she’s already talking as she walks through the door of their room, wringing her hands with emotional energy, but he doesn’t listen, he just wraps her in his arms and squeezes tight, almost too tight.

_“Felicity…”_

She can hear his heart pounding rapidly in his chest and when he eases up in the slightest, she glances down at her phone and realizes she must have shut it back off after Gerry called.

“I’m sorry,” she breathes into his shoulder. “I just needed some air.”

“Stay here,” he fairly begs. “There’s plenty of air. Yell at me, freeze me out, whatever you need, _just don’t go_.”

Something about the desperation in his last few words flips a switch inside her and the ensuing flood of emotions threatens to drown her, forcing her take a step back, out of his arms.

“You know what I’ve been thinking about all week?” She can only meet his confused eyes for a second. “What I was thinking about just now? You going down on that cargo plane.”

“Felicity…”

“No, you’re just going to listen to me for a second,” she chokes on the tears that are already threatening to spill down her cheeks. “You’re the one who was going to die, you’re the one who was going to leave again, _without saying goodbye._ You can sit right there and listen to me.”

He whispers her name again, so soft she almost misses it, but he holds his hands up in surrender, sinking down to sit on the bed.

“I never get to say goodbye,” she whispers harshly, hazarding a glance at his face. “My father, Cooper…”

She almost doesn’t say “you,” the blow is already registering, she can tell. But they’ve come this far. And this is one of those moments.

“In Nanda Parbat,” her voice is shaking but unmistakably angry, “you stood there and you kissed me and you told me, ‘Not this time.’ You didn’t let me say goodbye. You didn’t even tell me that you loved me.”

“Because I _couldn’t,_ Felicity.” His voice comes out in almost a hiss and he’s staring at his shoes, scuffing them angrily against the cheap motel carpet. “If I said that to you, if I had to look at you for ten more seconds, I was getting on that plane. We’d all be dead by now.”

She can’t help herself, she reaches out for him then, grabbing his hands from where she stands in front of him and squeezing them too tight to be comfortable.

“I saved Ray’s life, did you know that?” He shakes his head and raises sad eyes to hers, but she only sharpens her edge further at the memory. “Thanks to one of your guys. They didn’t just give him an arrow wound, they gave him a blood clot that was going to kill him.”

“I saved his life, broke the law to do it actually, and I was so relieved,” she breathes. “He looked at me all grateful and told me that he loved me and I…”

She had been wondering if this confession would make him draw back She should have guessed he would only squeeze her hands tighter.

“I thought, this one’s about me. This is where I get my chance. And I had it,” she stops for a deep breath to steel herself. “I could have told him goodbye, I could have told him that I loved him, but I didn’t tell him anything.”

He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out, which is good, because she needs to finish what she’s started.

“All I saw was your face.” His eyes go wide at this confession and he pulls on her hands where they’re connected, drawing her into his lap and rubbing her back until she lets out a deep shaky breath.

“I didn’t love Ray, Oliver. I never did,” she mumbles into his neck. “He was a band-aid on a busted dam.”

He scoots them back against the headboard and cradles her in his stupidly strong arms, and only then does she realize she’s been sobbing.

“If you had gone down with that plane, I…I like to think I’d be doing what I am now. I like to think I’d be strong enough to look for conspiracy theories and crazy ways to prove that you were still alive. I like to think I’d be worried about what comes next. But part of me is pretty sure that I wouldn’t be able to. Part of me is sure that I wouldn’t be anything at all.”

Her voice breaks as she trails off and the tears and wine and adrenaline catch up to her quickly. She dozes off, wrapped in his arms and the last thing she thinks is that his forehead is pressed against hers again, but this time he’ll be there when she wakes up.

 

* * *

 

It’s not until she wakes a few hours later that she gets around to telling him the other fairly important development of the day.

“You be great at it, you know that right?” he says, rubbing her feet from the other side of the bed. “Better than either of us, probably combined. Though I’m not pulling a whole lot of weight in that equation.”

“I could just sign it back over to you,” she muses and he looks at her like she’s grown a second head. “You could have Queen Consolidated back.”

“You’re not going to do that Felicity,” he emphasizes with a shake of his head. “No way in hell.”

“Why not?”

“There’s a long list of reasons why not, number one of which is that you’d be a hundred times better than me at that job,” he says, looking at her with his serious eyes.

“You’re sure?” she asks. “I know how badly you wanted your family's company back.”

“That feels like a million years ago,” he tells her honestly, pulling himself up to sit beside her against the headboard and look her in the eye. “Listen, Felicity, we have talked a lot about me becoming someone else. But we never really talked about what that means for you.”

She’s a little disappointed in herself when she realizes he’s right. She hasn’t thought about it at all. She’s even more disappointed to realize that, for as much as she’s thought of herself as an independent woman, when she thinks about what she wants to do next, the only thing that come to mind is being with him.

“I think you’d be great for this,” he continues cheerfully, oblivious to her internal struggle. “And I think you should take some time and think about if this job would be great for you.”

“I don’t…”

“Besides,” he interrupts with a glint in his eye. “There are ways to get the Queen name back on the building other than making me CEO.”

“Sure, I mean, I guess you could let Thea take over.”

“Not Thea.” She’s a genius, really she is. She’s got the paperwork and everything. But it takes her nearly a full minute to put together what he’s saying.

_“Oliver...”_ she asks warily, even though his Cheshire cat grin is so bright they could turn out the lights and still be able to see each other. “What are you asking me?”

“I’m not asking you anything.” The grin turns to a satisfied, almost smug smirk, and she breathes a little sigh of relief.

“Good, because I love you, I do. I’m just not sure we’re ready for...”

“You’re right,” he says with a nod, and he’s still smirking, he doesn’t look disappointed at all. “I don’t think we are either. That’s why I wasn’t asking.”

“Okay, but…”

“Felicity, when I’m asking, you’ll know. You know how?”

“How?”

“Because I’ll be asking.”

She slaps his arm hard enough that he winces a little, but he’s still got that smile.

“I love you.”

She scoffs, because duh, he basically just said that he was going to marry her. But he keeps talking and her heart swells with every word that passes through his lips.

“I love you, and I don’t say it enough...out loud, I mean.” He’s adorable when he stammers. “I think it all the time. I have to stop myself from saying it too much, because I’m thinking it all the time, constantly.”

“Oliver,” she says, teasing but a bit breathless. “You’re babbling a little. You’re not about to ask me to another explosive Italian dinner, are you?”

“These past three years,” he continues, frowning quick at her flippancy, “there has been so much to occupy my mind. Revenge, danger, misery, my own mortality six or seven times over...”

She winces a little at that but is frozen silent at his laser focus and gravely, almost broken voice.

“Since we left though, it’s like all that’s been muted, or at least turned down low. Because it’s just the two of us, and the only thing that runs through my head, day and night, is I love you, I love you, _I love you, I…_ ”

This time she’s the one holding him too tight, swinging a leg over to settle in his lap and hold him with her whole body. She loosens her grip only to press desperate kisses all over his face, landing finally on his mouth, where he kisses her like he did the first time, desperate, like he can’t help himself.

“I love you too,” she breathes against his lips. “I love you so damn much.”

“I don’t know what happens next,” he answers, similarly breathless. “I don’t know what my life looks like now. But I swear to you, Felicity, I want to live. For you, with you, beside you, for as long as I’ve got.”

And she thinks it’s a good thing he said something before, because otherwise that sounds an awful lot like asking.

 

* * *

 

They stay up talking about identities past, present, and future, until the sun starts to spill through the curtains.

“I wasn’t jealous,” he tells her in the low, honest light of the early morning. “I was just being selfish. And I hate myself when I’m selfish. I know we have to go back, I know there are people to help, and still, I just...a really big part of me just wants us to turn in the other direction and run for it.”

She nods at him shakily, thankful that she’s all cried out for the night, and gives him a watery smile because she gets it. And at the same time, she gets that they both know how impossible that is. It’s just not who he is. Who they are. So he presses kisses to her eyelids and her lips and runs out to get them breakfast while she starts planning their route home.

“You could be my EA,” she teases, when he comes back with her coffee just the way she likes it.

“I’ll bring you coffee every day if you want,” he tells her seriously. “Whatever you need, Felicity.”

She’s joking. She finds out in the months to come that he was not. He brings her coffee every day for months as she takes her spot as CEO. He brings her mugs of hot chocolate mochas when she’s up all night with paperwork, taking the company to new heights. He brings her shots of espresso in to-go cups as she rushes to meetings around town, succeeding in her goal to build not just a corporate superpower, but a force for good in the city. 

And nearly a year to the day after the crews finish rebuilding the top of the Palmer Technologies tower, word comes in that it’s time to change it all over again.


	7. The Symmetry Will Keep Me Close To You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day before they return to Starling, Felicity gets a manicure and Oliver buys her a dress.

**The Symmetry Will Keep Me Close To You**

_“I know we stayed up talking in circles,_  
_but I like to think the symmetry will keep me close to you”_  
_\- fun. “Sight of the Sun”_

The day before they return to Starling, Felicity makes him stop at the first town on their route that has a nail salon with semi-decent Yelp reviews.

“An incoming CEO can’t have nail beds this janky, Oliver,” she lectures when he tries to protest. “She just can’t.”

He rolls his eyes and pretends to grimace, but betrays the whole thing by chuckling a little, and she tosses up another silent wish that his laugh sticks around once they’re back within the Starling City limits.

When they arrive for her appointment, he follows her in sheepishly and actually takes a seat like he’s going to stay, folding himself into the tiny plastic chair next to her. She lets him fidget for just a second, because it’s kind of hilarious, how he looks less comfortable here than he had in chains at the police precinct a few months back. He’s a ridiculous man but he’s finally hers, and the whole thing still makes her a little giddy.

“Oliver,” she stage-whispers, watching his eyes dart from station to station, from pumice stone to cuticle trimmer. “You don’t have to wait here. Come back for me in like, an hour.”

Relief floods his face with a brilliant, grateful smile, but as he stands, she’s rudely distracted by a glimpse of one of the other salon patrons eyeing them. Well eying Oliver, really. When her eyes land on Felicity, they’re full of questions, most of which are some variation on _Who are you?_ and _How did you?_

She realizes that these kinds of queries will only be amplified once they’re back in Starling, where he’s socially significant in addition to being physically so, but before the ugly thoughts even have a chance to manifest themselves, he’s leaning down to press a goodbye kiss right on her lips.

“Half an hour,” he breathes against her mouth, pecking her again quick. “I’ll be back in half an hour.”

And he is, carrying a big gift box from what looks like a fancy boutique, and she doesn’t even feel bad about flashing the still bug-eyed patron a smug smile as he cautiously helps her out of the massage chair.

“What’d you get?” she asks him eagerly once they’re out at the curb and he’s opening her car door for her as she fans her nails.

“It’s a surprise,” he smiles.

She lunges for the box anyway.

“Don’t,” Oliver warns her teasingly, holding it up out of her reach. “Don’t touch me, your nails are probably still tacky. You didn’t sit long enough.”

She must look at him like he’s speaking Mandarin because he just shrugs a little sheepish and explains: “Not all girls let you leave.”

She tries not to, really she does. But the thought of pre-island Oliver Queen sitting stiffly in a nail salon as pre-island Laurel Lance got her mani/pedi makes her laugh out loud. When he joins her, she takes it as distraction enough to reach for the box again. But he’s quicker than her, of course he is, and before she knows it, he’s got her wrists in one hand behind her back and her body pressed up against his, other hand still holding the box aloft.

“Ugh, the struggles of having a ninja boyfriend,” she whines as she struggles half-heartedly against him and his eyes go sharp then soft in a second and then he’s bending his head down to kiss her hard. Is that really the first time she’s said that out loud? She’s been stuck on “partner” in her head, and it’s not like she’s had to really _refer_ to him all that much on this trip (although she’s certainly said his name an awful lot).

When she pulls back from his lips, she notices over his shoulder that Nosy Nellie at the salon is still gawking at them through the window, now joined by a few of the other patrons and manicurists. Good, she thinks. Let them look. Let there be as many witnesses to this as possible.

 

* * *

 

She tears the box open once they’re in their hotel room a hundred or so miles down the route, and immediately she knows that she was correct in her assumption that it’s something fancy for dinner tonight. But the smile drops off her face and and her heart skips in the bad way when she realizes exactly what kind of fancy it is.

“Oliver,” she asks cautiously, trying not to let her voice shake, “why did you buy me this dress?”

“I just wanted to see it on you,” he shrugs, but he won’t meet her eyes for more than a second at a time. She takes a step closer to him, holding the red material up to meet his ever-shifting sight line.

“This looks exactly like the dress I wore on our first date.”

“Does it?”

“ _Oliver_.”

“I noticed the earrings,” he shrugs and that’s probably the last thing she was expecting him to say, and is actually, totally adorable in their special heartbreaking kind of way. But still…

“I can’t believe you did this.”

“I just thought it would be nice,” he drops his head as he buttons up his dress shirt and his voice sounds so small.

“You don’t think it’s kind of morbid?” she asks him, honestly curious. In all the ways she’s imagined them getting it together, in all the dreams she allowed herself while he was gone, never once did she imagine them redoing that nightmare of a first date. “I mean, shouldn’t we be looking forward instead of thinking back to something that was just, totally doomed from the start?”

When she looks up from where she’s trailed off, she sees him frown and his eyes have gone sadder than she ever wants to see them again, not now that she’s had her chance to see them so happy. _He_ pictured it, she realizes. He pictured them getting it right from the start, that night that was supposed to be their beginning.

“I only mean,” she’s worried she can’t explain herself fast enough, “so much has happened in the last year. There was so much that could have torn us apart, even then. Ra’s, The League, Malcolm, _Sara_...”

The furrow in his brow goes deeper with every example, but he still doesn’t speak, and her heart is sinking rapidly, so she goes for a long shot.

“Plus, I mean, you had only _just_ realized that you loved me.”

“No,” he rasps out, pausing as he clips on his suspenders to turn to her forcefully. Of course this is where he finds his voice. “You’re wrong.”

“About what?”

“When I knew.”

It takes her a moment to read in his insistent eyes that he’s not just being combative, he’s got something in mind. A specific mark on his timeline, just like she has on hers.

“Fine then,” she challenges, running her fingertips under the straps on his chest. “When did you know?”

“Russia.” he blurts out, wincing as he realizes at the same time she does why that sounds like it sounds. Unsurprisingly, she finds her words first.

“Russia.” She lets the suspenders snap back and aims to level him with her glare. “Russia, where you slept with another woman, Russia?”

“Yes,” he admits, dropping his voice so low she almost misses when he adds, “but I said your name when I came.”

She drops the dress. Actually lets the beautiful red fabric fall to the patterned, probably gross, hotel carpet.

“I’m sorry,” she blinks at his reddening face. “You what now?”

“When I was...with Isabel,” he stammers nervously. “I said your name, when I…”

“Why?” It’s literally the only question she can think of.

“I don’t know,” he mutters. “It’s not like I did it intentionally.”

“Oliver.”

“I don’t know Felicity, okay? I was thinking of you, I guess, and she said some things to me that…”

“She got to you,” Felicity nods knowingly. “She never liked me, even before...all that.”

“No, she said things about me.” He’s clearer now, collecting himself to look in her eyes and explain. “Isabel, she saw right through me. Said I reminded her of what she saw in the mirror.”

“She was saying what she needed to say to exact her crazy, twisted revenge, Oliver,” Felicity babbles for both of their benefits, really. When you intentionally hit someone with a 15-passenger van, you really have to continue to think the worst of them for the rest of your life.

“She told me she knew I was smarter than I let on,” he says, thunderheads rolling across his blue eyes, “that I was driven like her.”

“You are smart,” Felicity agrees, tapping his chest and sliding her bright nails down his white dress shirt down to grab hold of his hands. “But you are not even close to being driven in the same way she was.”

“She also said I was lonely like her,” he admits quietly. “That’s when I started thinking about you.”

She still confused, it’s just becoming a better feeling. He squeezes her hands, and that’s better too.

“She was down there with me, in the bar, because she was lonely. She was nice to me, because she was lonely. She slept with me…”

“Yeah, that’s probably not the only reason she did _that_.” It comes out snappier than she means it to. Or maybe it comes out exactly right.

“I wasn’t lonely though,” he dips his head so he can look her right in the eye. “She was wrong about me, and I knew that as soon as she said it. I wasn’t alone. I was waiting for you, remember?”

“So we could go rescue Digg,” she huffs out the memory, struck a little dumb at his words and the way he’s looking at her..

“Yeah,” he nods with a grin. “That too.”

“That was a good enough explanation that I am going to put on this dress now,” she tells him breathlessly, hazarding a glance at the clock, which really makes the decision for her. “Even though it doesn’t really match my nails. But we are not done talking about this.”

“Felicity, you put on that dress and I promise, no one’s going to be looking at your fingers.”

“They might be looking for a ring,” she blurts out without thinking. She turns quickly into the bathroom, flushing and furious at herself for the slip, and barely sees him choke out a little laugh and shove his hands into the pockets of his dress pants.

 

* * *

 

When she comes out of the bathroom, she’s actually stopped short at the sight of _him_. Suspenders, a tie and tailored jacket, still a little scruffy. And yeah, that look on his face.

“Felicity,” he nearly chokes out and for the first time on the whole trip, she finds herself nervous in front of him. It’s like she’s gone too far back in time, all the way back to when she was just an I.T. girl who kept her profile lower than her ponytail and he was _Oliver Queen_.

“You know,” she muses to distract herself. “This isn’t an accurate reenactment. You were out Arrow-ing before our first date. I met you at the restaurant.”

“This isn’t about being accurate, Felicity,” he insists, grabbing her coat and helping her slip it on, breathing his next words hot against her neck. “It’s about getting it right. I should have picked you up. I should have told you how fucking amazing you look in that dress.”

“Wait a second,” she realizes suddenly, turning to face him once she’s got her arms through the sleeves. “You said you realized in Russia, you said my name in Russia.”

“Yes.”

“What about Sara?” she remembers aloud, cringing as it registers that she’s actually bringing up his dead ex-girlfriend as he’s sweetly trying to recreate their first date. But she kind of needs to know now. “That was after. Did you ever…with Sara?”

“No,” he says, like he’s got gravel in his throat, dropping his eyes from her for the first time since he saw her in the dress. “Sara and I never said anything.”

He’s gone sad again and so she lays a hand on his cheek and scratches through his stubble and up into his hair in the way she’s learned that he likes. The way that makes his eyes drop close and his mouth turn up at the corners. The way that kind of reminds her of like, a floppy little German Shepherd puppy, not that she’d ever say that to his face (yet).

It works. When his eyes open, he’s back.

“I love you,” he growls, nuzzling into her hand. Total puppy. “I’ve loved you for longer than I even know.”

“I love you too, you big sap.”

She pressed a kiss to his cheek and takes his hand in hers, and they go out for Italian. Everybody likes Italian.

 

* * *

 

It’s not until they’re seated at the restaurant and the sommelier’s poured them something red and expensive that she realizes even though she was the one who said they needed to keep talking about Isabel, he’s the one who’s not finished.

“You know, when I said earlier, when I realized...it wasn’t when I said your name,” he blurts out, and she hushes him in embarrassment, glancing around them to check for small children and eavesdroppers. “It was when I saw your face. When you caught us, and then again, when we got back. When I told you…”

She goes from warm to cold so fast she’s probably got freezer burn.

“Ah yes, the old ‘because of what I do’ speech,” she bites, pulling her hands from his to give him bitter air quotes, which look as ridiculous as they sound. “I certainly do have a type: heroes with a death wish.”

“Because you save us,” he says. “You’ve saved us all, Felicity. The Arrow, the Atom, the Flash, even Arsenal and the Canaries. You’re the one who saves the heroes.”

She laughs for a second at the ridiculous thing he’s said, but he doesn’t join her. His eyes are deadly serious and boring into hers.

“You saved my life, Felicity,” he says in a low voice that makes parts of her body feel like they’re starting to liquefy. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know that. You saved me so many times over, in every possible way. Most recently, when you put on a goddamn robot suit and caught me when I was falling to my death.”

“Ray asked me what you would do in that situation,” she remembers, reaching for his hands again but unable to pull her eyes from his. “He was talking about saving the city, but I knew... it was _you_ up there.”

“You’ve saved my life dozens of times, maybe hundreds” he continues. “Over the comms, keeping an eye out for me, figuring out something brilliant that kept us a step ahead...”

“Plus when I brought Barry in that first time,” she interrupts, trying to keep them at least a little on the light side tonight. She doesn’t dwell on how twisted it is that this counts as light. “He stopped your blood from turning into chocolate pudding.”

“He did,” Oliver admits with a grimace that turns to a mischievous grin. “Did I not thank you for that?”

She barks out a laugh. “No, you never did.”

He squeezes her hands and pulls one of them up to press a kiss to her palm and then continues, still so serious.

“You saved my life when my mother shot me,” he says, unconsciously looking down the scar on his shoulder. “Before you even knew if you could trust me. You drove me to the foundry and you rewired that AED and helped Digg bring me back to life.”

She looks at him strangely again, because there’s no way he could actually remember that, and he chuckles. “You think he didn’t start bragging about you the second you ran up those stairs?”

“I think that’s when I knew,” she admits breathlessly, remembering the frantic drive to the Foundry, how relieved she had been to see John, even as he pulled his gun on her, how her heart had beaten faster every time Oliver’s had stopped. “I didn’t even know what it was yet. But there was something in my chest...when we didn’t know if you were going to wake up. And it’s never really gone away.”

“I know the feeling,” he tells her, eyes going stormy again. “When you went out that night and Ray...when I couldn’t be the one to keep you safe. I almost went right through Diggle trying to get to you.”.

“I’m sure that must have been hard,” she counters, as sympathetic as she can muster while her mind is flooded with memories of the last year’s mix of uncertainty and terror. “And I love you, but trust me, you do _not_ know the feeling. It's been so much worse…”

“On the mountain and in Nanda Parbat,” he answers for both of them. “You saved me there too. Even though you weren’t with me. You gave me something to live for.”

“Tatsu said...” The tears are constant now, and she thanks whatever gods there are for him and for waterproof mascara as she trails off.

“Your name was the first thing I said when I woke up,” he nods. “And when I...when he tried to turn me into Al Sah-him, you were the only thing that kept me sane.”

For as much misery as she felt after leaving him behind in Nanda Parbat, she never fully let herself think of how he had suffered, worried the anguish would up and consume her. She nearly tips over the edge thinking about it now, but he grounds her, holding her eyes and telling her everything in the crazy honest way that they’ve discovered in these last weeks. She loves him so much.

“In the dungeon, I’d start to slip, and I’d think of you,” he tells her darkly. “But I didn’t picture your happy life, like I told you I would.”

She remembers that moment: standing in the firelight, saying goodbye without using the words, pressing her forehead to his and wondering if she’d ever get the chance again.

“I pictured _our_ life,” he chokes out, squeezing her hands tight. “The two of us together. What could have happened, how things could have been if nothing had gone wrong…”

“From the beginning,” she finishes for him, swiping at the tears left on her cheeks, finally fully understanding the importance of this night and this scene and this dress. “I get it, Oliver. And you have to know that you deserve it.”

“We both do.” His echoing words make them both smile softly and pull them back from the dark place, back to love and light and a candlelit dinner and a new life together.

On their second first date, though, they still don’t make it through the first course. But this time, it’s not because they’re nervous. It’s because they know each other all too well. It’s not because he’s trying to explain to her how much she means to him. It’s because she already knows. It’s not because an RPG goes off. It’s because she blows his self-control to bits when she reminds him that another thing he didn’t get to do that night is take the red dress off of her.

 

* * *

 

He pulls her to her feet with fire in his eyes, tossing a wad of bills onto the table, save one to slide into the hand of the coat check attendant. He pays the kid extra to take a ten minute break, but it only takes him five to make her come, pressed in between what feel like expensive furs, his lips hot against her throat and his hand up under her pretty red dress as she pants his name into his ear.

When they straighten themselves up and make their way to the valet stand, she assumes that they’re headed back to the hotel for round two. So she’s more than a little surprised when they end up on a high hilltop overlooking the lights of Starling City. Something’s up, but he’s quiet for a long time, eyes alternating between her and the skyline, as they sit on the hood of the Porsche.

“You saved me too, you know,” she whispers when she can’t stand the silence any longer. “My life could have been so boring.”

She hears him spit out a quiet laugh and cringes a little at the bitterness and self-deprecation she can sense in it. He’s feeling guilty, he thinks she was joking.

“I’m serious, Oliver,” she continues in a rush. “Before you, I...I didn’t have a lot. I had my job and I had my computers. I didn’t have a lot of friends. I didn’t have a lot of confidence. I didn’t have a lot of love in my life. I didn’t have a lot of anything.”

He turns to her with the same face she remembers from her one happy memory of Nanda Parbat, when he was bathed in candlelight and looking at her like he never could have believed what she was telling him. So she tells him again.

“You changed all of that. You changed everything.”

“ _Felicity_ …”

He takes her hands in his, that disbelieving yet hopeful look still in his eyes, and she feels him slip something on her right ring finger.

“Oliver, what...”

“Still not asking,” he assures her quickly, melting her heart with his cautious optimism and his repeated sentiments. “I just wanted to see it on you.”

She realizes she does too, looking down and gasping audibly at the ring, which is nothing like she’s ever pictured and all the more perfect for it.

“It’s beautiful.”

“It’s you and me, Felicity,” he tells her, wrapping an arm around her like the emerald stones wrap behind the smaller diamonds. He’s talking about the bands of the ring, but he’s also talking about something else. “From here on out. Whatever happens when we get back. Whatever happens with your job, whatever happens with my life. _Whatever you need_.”

“Oliver,” she breathes, but there’s nothing to say except, “you too. Whatever you need.”

He bends down to kiss her then, and it’s chaste and simple, but sweet with possibility. When they pull back, the whispered “I love yous” get tangled together in the space between their lips and she kisses him again, just because she needs to.

“I’ve come back to this city so many times," he says to the Starling skyline, running his hand down her arm and tracing his thumb and forefinger over the ring, rubbing almost absently. "Out of guilt, or obligation…”

“Or because John and I came and dragged you,” she teases, snuggling in closer and tucking her head under his chin.

“That too,” he muses, and she can feel him smile where his chin is pressed against her forehead. “But it never felt like coming home. Until now.”

He tightens his arm around her, and she knows he can feel it too. Their escapist adventure is coming to an end, but the real journey is just beginning. And it’s the two of them, together.

“You’re my home, Felicity.”

 

* * *

 

p.s. [Here’s the ring](http://www.kay.com/images/products/1329/132924705_MV_ZM.jpg) if anybody's curious.


	8. Blame It On The Queens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's one more thing they have to do before they head home.

**Blame It On The Queens**

_“Do you remember when we stayed up till the sun stretched through the room?_  
_I used to blame it on the queens walking down 7th Avenue.”_  
_-fun. “Sight of the Sun”_

When she looks back on it, she’ll think it’s pretty fitting that they only get about ten blissful minutes after he slips the band of emeralds and diamonds onto her ring finger. _Right_ ring finger, she’s correcting herself mentally for the fourth or fifth time when her cell phone chimes.

She pulls her phone from her jacket and frowns a little when she sees it’s Thea calling. When she turns her frown on Oliver, he’s patting at his pockets.

“Mine must be in the car,” he observes, grinning at her. “Had something more important in my pocket.”

She matches his giddy smile and kisses him quick before answering the phone on speaker.

“Hey Thea, it’s both of us.”

“Ollie?” Felicity didn’t know Thea when she was a little girl, but she imagines she sounds pretty much like her worried tone does now. The look on Oliver’s suddenly stark face all but confirms this.

“What’s wrong?”

“We sort of need your help,” his sister answers. “Well, mostly Felicity’s, I guess. Unless there’s any chance you can be here in less than an hour.”

Oliver starts beside her, and Felicity immediately grabs at his arm to keep him in place. Because she knows where his head’s at, and she also knows she’s going to have to remind him of the reality of the situation.

“Oliver,” she says firmly. “We can’t. You know we can’t. We’re two hours out at least.”

“We can _try_ ,” he growls back at her.

“Yeah, or we can get me to a computer and actually be able to help them,” she rolls her eyes in frustration, turning back to her phone. “Thea, what’s going on?”

“Malcolm’s been...increasing the League’s presence in Starling over the past few weeks,” his sister answers. “Little by little. We’ve been monitoring…”

“ _What_?” Felicity recognizes Oliver’s tone from an argument about Ray that feels like a lifetime ago now. “When were you planning on telling us?”

“Not until we absolutely needed you,” Thea challenges, and Felicity can see her clearly in her mind’s eye, puffing out her chest at her big brother. “Honestly, Ollie, we’ve had things under control.”

“Merlyn’s trying to run the city remotely,” a deeper voice interjects over the speakerphone and Oliver lets out a deep breath beside her. “He’s just sending his henchmen over to do his bidding.”

“Digg,” Felicity asks, before Oliver can find his words, “you’re going out?”

“Got my identity concealed and everything,” John’s assuring voice warms some of the icy panic in her gut and she wishes so badly she could see him. She settles for using her free hand to clutch at Oliver’s and he squeezes back, hard.

“He’s doing the same thing he did before,” they hear Laurel chime in from the background. “The bastard’s still purging the Glades, now he’s just doing it with his own personal army.”

“He’s taken hostages in a warehouse by the docks,” Thea explains. “Friends and family of Star City’s rich and famous.”

“Bargaining chips,” Oliver growls, and she finds she’s equal parts disappointed and proud (and maybe just the tiniest bit turned on), hearing his Arrow voice again.

“There’s security cameras all around the docks,” Felicity works out, shaking her head to get back to business. “I can hack into their network, switch them to infrared.”

“That’s what we were hoping,” Thea confirms. “Keep an eye out and keep tabs on us, since we’ve all got to be on the ground for this one.”

“I’ll try to find somewhere I can get on a desktop,” she tells them, already opening her phone’s browser. "Worst case, I can sort of run things from our phones and my tablet."

Oliver sets his jaw and nods silently at her as his sister’s voice crackles over the speaker.

“Go team.”

* * *

They pull up to the nearest Best Buy about seven minutes before closing time and Felicity immediately darts through the automatic doors and back towards the Geek Squad counter.

“Hi, is there any chance that we could maybe…. pay you for computer access?” she asks the wide-eyed, polo-shirted teenager behind the counter, seemingly the only soul left in the whole place. “Or maybe, buy a computer from you, use it real quick and then return it?”

“Felicity, I can just buy you…” Oliver starts to protest as he catches up, but trails off when he catches the kid staring wide-eyed with recognition. It’s a look he’s used to, but this time it’s directed at Felicity. Oliver clears his throat in a fairly obvious manner, uncomfortable with the attention for more reasons than he’s willing to admit, but the kid’s locked in.

“You’re Felicity Smoak, aren’t you?” Geek Squad gapes. “You work with Ray Palmer.”

“I do,” Felicity answers, sounding relieved to hear someone else refer to Ray in the present tense. Truth told, so is Oliver.

“Follow me.”

Without a word of explanation, the kid leads them to the back to the store’s home studio setups, opening the door to a small recording booth. It's a mockup, with fake mics, but the computer looks real enough to Oliver. Felicity’s approving nod to the kid as she sits down and boots up is confirmation enough.

"It's not on the store’s internal network," Geek Squad says with a look to Felicity that tells Oliver that's more important than it sounds. "It's not on any network."

“It is now,” she says, inputting a USB stick, clicking a few keys, and smiling up at the kid like sunshine. “It’s perfect. Thank you, Richie.”

“Door locks from the inside,” he assures them, stalwart expression betrayed by a furious blush at her praise. “I’ll hold things down out front until you guys are done.”

“Thanks.” Oliver does his best not to gawk at the kid, as he locks the door behind him but he’s pretty taken aback. It’s a setup so perfect he can't stop looking over his shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Everything’s fine, Oliver,” Felicity drolls absently as she clicks away, like she’s browsing through the files of his worried mind. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

She’s right, of course, for the most part. The cops don’t show and Geek Squad doesn’t turn out to be another one of The League’s young plants. The computer’s powerful enough for her to connect to the infrared security cameras, and she’s even able to hack two of the bluetooth studio headsets so they can both be on the comm network with “Speedy,” the “Black Canary,” and...Digg.

“No name,” their friend insists stubbornly. “Just, nobody call me anything and we’ll be fine.”

For Oliver, it’s surreal and uncomfortably smooth. Thea and Laurel sneak in undetected and smuggle the seven hostages out, into the waiting police vehicles, which he realizes is going to warrant a whole separate conversation about what, or who, got Quentin back on their side.

They’re just finishing up when there’s a rustling sound over the comm links. His “too good to be true” sensors are already on high alert, but they click up a notch..

“One second,” Thea whispers, and then her comm connection clicks off.

“Thea!” The sound of Laurel’s worried voice, the sound of his sister’s given name, is enough to send Oliver into panic mode.

“Thea?” he calls, turning his headset off and on, like that will bring her back.

“Her comm’s disconnected,” Felicity trying to sound calm, which only makes things worse. “I’m trying to override…”

The video screen blasts to red a split second before they hear the explosion over their headsets.

“ _Thea_!”

* * *

There’s a moment where the only sound that’s audible in the insulated studio is her frantic keystrokes, so the panic in his voice echoes in her mind as she tries to simultaneously track any individual infrared signals on a now-inflamed video feed and reconnect his sisters’ comm link. She doesn’t dare hazard a glance back at Oliver, but she can feel him, tense and coiled behind her.

“Thea?” She hazards a guess at the first sign of success on her screen.

There’s a click on the line and then a few sharp coughs.

“Sorry guys,” Thea snarks. “Had to kill the chatter for a second.”

Oliver collapses, actually falls to his knees beside her chair, wrapping his arms around her waist and heaving hot, heavy breaths into her stomach and hips.

“Thea, what happened?” Felicity asks when Oliver makes no move to pick up his headset from where it’s fallen to the floor.

“They had the place rigged to blow in case anybody tried anything,” his sister explains. “I figured best case I get a clean shot at Malcolm, worst case I blow some of his goons into the bay.”

“That is not your call to make!” Oliver’s got his headset on enough to croak out his warning, but his tone belies his emotions. “Guys, what the hell happened?”

“It is absolutely my call,” Thea retorts through clenched teeth, not giving anyone else the chance to speak. “And it was my mistake. I missed. I’ll get him next time.”

Oliver throws his headphones against the opposite wall of the studio, so hard Felicity hears them crack.

“Guys, we’ll be back in town tomorrow,” she announces, clearing the air, waiting for sounds of affirmation from Laurel and Digg before signing off. “Call or text if you need anything.”

When she turns from the computer to him, he’s pacing the tiny room, shaking his head.

“Oliver, you have to stop.”

“Everything was fine, everybody was fine,” he mutters under his breath, still lost in some darkness. “She just had to go barging back in there…”

“Hey, hey,” she stands and moves to press herself right up in front of him, stopping his gait, wrapping her arms around his waist. “It’s not easy at the beginning, remember? She’ll get better. We’ll help.”

He’s quiet for a long moment, but no amount of time would have prepared her for his next thoughts.

“Tommy would have hated me for this.” His voice is gravel, scraping at his raw throat. “If he were here, he’d hate me for putting his girls in danger. Especially if he had known about Thea…”

“If he was here, both of those ‘girls’ would disabuse you of the notion that you _put_ them anywhere,” she snaps a little, mostly still furious at Thea for making him worry. “You heard your sister. Oliver, you didn’t make them do anything.”

He nuzzles her neck and when he speaks, she wonders if he did it to muffle his words.

“I’m going to kill his father,” he confesses, newly resolute after what’s happened tonight. It’s in this moment that she lets go of the crazy hope shes been harboring that he’d never have to put on the suit again. It’s easier than she thought it would be. “Someday. I don’t know when. But I’m going to kill my best friend’s father, and wipe out his family name.”

When he pulls back, he looks so tortured what’s left of her crumbles at the need to soothe his pain. It’s just like after any other mission, she realizes, only this particular time, the hurt is all internal. And she knows that when he suits up again, it will be different. Because _they’re_ different. The emotion of the understanding chokes her next confession.

“If Tommy were here, he would know that you’ve saved us all, so many times over.” She cards her fingers through his longer hair, and stifles a shudder at the unbidden thought of his last haircut. “He’d know what you’ve given up, for your family, for your city. He’d know you were a hero, that you still are. He could never have hated you.”

“He would have loved _you_.” Oliver kisses her lips softly as her heart twists with the meaning of his words. He presses his forehead to hers for a long moment, then lets out a breath. “Let’s go home.”

* * *

He shakes the Geek Squad kid’s hand firmly on their way out, too spent from adrenaline to worry about calling this anything more than pure dumb luck. And, because he’s got Tommy on the brain, he pulls out one of his best friend’s oldest tricks and palms the kid $200.

“I accidentally...dropped some headphones,” he goes for cool guy suave, but he’s still a little shaky.

“Don’t worry about it,” Geek Squad says, pulling his hands back in surrender. “Keep your money.”

“No, seriously, you should take it,” Felicity tells him. “They’re going to take that out of your pay. Plus, you really saved our butts.”

“It wasn’t a problem,” the kid smiles sheepishly, blushing hard but taking the cash, “and I appreciate it.”

“Seriously, thank you, Richie.” She lingers and Oliver sees the moment her curiosity gets the best of her. “Can I ask, though, why did...how did you….”

“My mother’s an executive at Mercury Labs,” the kid interrupts. It doesn’t mean anything to Oliver, but Felicity’s eyes go wide.

“The bees,” she says, kind of hushed, eyes far away on a memory, and the kid nods seriously in affirmation.

“I hacked the security cams after the attack and saw that it was Ray Palmer’s ATOM suit that saved her that night,” he tells her, more than a little proud. “You were his #2, and with your credentials, I… I just assumed you were behind hijacking the swarm.”

“Pretty smart there, Rick.” Felicity smiles, and the kid goes beet-red again. “Come and see me when you graduate.”

She hands him a business card and thanks him one last time as they head out to the parking lot. This time it’s his curiosity that’s overwhelming.

“Bees?”

“I didn’t tell you about my nemesis?” It sounds like she’s teasing, but his fists clench involuntarily at the thought.

“You have a nemesis?”

“Had,” she corrects. “Past tense. While you were gone. But don’t worry, I totally vanquished her.”

* * *

It’s late by the time they get back to the motel, but they’re both too wired to sleep, so they decide to have sex and hit the road, in that order.

The afterglow is a literal one when the sun starts to stretch through the cheap blinds. When he lifts her hand to press his lips to it and bites his teeth down lightly on the band on around her finger, something in her gut rolls for maybe the hundredth time that night.

“You’ve been staring all night long, Oliver,” she teases. “And not even at me, at the ring. If I were less competent, I might have let it distract me.”

“If you were less competent, it wouldn’t distract _me_ so much in the first place,” he fairly whines. “It’s on the wrong hand.”

“Oliver…”

“I know it’s not the right time,” he interrupts, sounding childish as he draws out the last two words. “But I didn’t realize...how it would feel, seeing it on you. It just makes me want to do it right now. It makes me want to say the words.”

“What words?” She’s almost to exasperated, because she doesn’t even want to play devil’s advocate here. She doesn’t want to have to remind him why they _can’t_ when every other cell of her body is telling her that they absolutely should. But she does have to. So she turns to look him dead in the eye.

“What words, Oliver? For better or for worse? For the Arrow or Al Sah-him? In sickness and in health, no matter which one of us is lying on the med table? For as long as we both shall live? _This time?_ ”

“Felicity…” The only word he gets out is her name, but she can hear the hurt and the guilt and the questions in it.

“We’ve been through so much in this last year alone, and we have dealt with so little of it,” she whispers, trying not sound scared. Failing. “I just want to make sure that we’re ready.”

He’s stunned a little silent, but not for long.

“I just want you to be my wife, Felicity,” he shrugs, “as soon as possible.”

“As soon as possible,” she promises with a hesitant smile, aware that they’re talking about slightly different timelines, but too blissed-out to care.

“Good.” He presses one final satisfied kiss to her right hand and spins the band once more around her finger.

“Oliver,” she laughs shakily through the tears that are still stubbornly clogging her throat, “if we’re not getting married, you really have to stop proposing.”

“Yeah, I don’t know.” He hops out of bed and pulls her up, wrapping her legs around his waist and scraping his grin down her throat as he carries her to the shower. “I wouldn’t count on it.”

* * *

He does keep asking. He asks her all the time, really. He just tries to do it without using his words. He knows that one day, when she’s ready, she’ll say yes. And that will be that.

He asks her when he brushes her hair out of her eyes in the morning and when he reaches for her in the middle of the night. He asks her when he holds her tight after a hectic night as the Green Arrow and when he tucks her under his shoulder after a hectic night at Palmer-Queen Incorporated.

He asks her the first time Thea gets hurt in the field, bad enough to land her in the hospital. He asks her when, instead of pulling away, he doesn’t let go of her for nearly a week straight, like she’s a port in a storm and he’s trying desperately to stay tethered.

He asks her when he drops her off at Laurel’s apartment almost every night for a month after Sara re-returns to their lives. Felicity calls them “Girls Nights” but he’s fairly certain that everyone involved -- Thea, Lyla sometimes, even Laurel herself -- knows that they’re really “Keep Laurel on the Wagon Nights.” He’s not sure why he’s surprised when they work, she saved _him_ after all, and Felicity Smoak’s capacity for kindness is seemingly unending when it comes to those she loves. So, he really can’t help himself if every night when he drops her off at Laurel’s, he pecks her lips, tells her how amazing she is, and after she shuts the car door behind her, asks her to marry him.

He asks her the night he and Digg finally have it out over their jagged recent history, a battle that comes to blows but ends in a bear hug. He meets Felicity’s loving, tear-filled gaze over his brother’s shoulder when he embraces her by way of saying goodbye, and he tries to make his eyes tell her “thank you” and “you were right” and “I love you” and “just marry me already.” He waits until Digg leaves to let his mouth tell her the same things. All of them except for the last one.

He asks her constantly, silently, for a year or two and she always answers him in the same way. Then one day, life makes him ask out loud.

Malcolm Merlyn makes his last stand on Star City, and Oliver, his team, and assorted allies (or enemies of the other side) fight for nearly two weeks, taking out wave after wave of League pros until the man himself comes home for a final showdown. It’s been nearly two straight days of battle and Oliver’s dead on his feet and dead-set on getting the final shot in on the unsuspecting Demon’s Head.

The new Ra’s al Ghul doesn’t know his goons outside are being handled with stealth and precision by Speedy and the Black Canary. He doesn’t know that Oliver’s team has rigged the incinerator in this waste management plant. And he doesn’t know what’s coming when a black figure swoops down from the roof and puts three arrows into his jugular. They’re all kill-shots and he bleeds out, sputtering as Nyssa pushes him onto the conveyer belt. She pries a ring off his finger just before his body drops into the flames of the incinerator.

When she starts back towards him, Oliver takes his final shot, an arching arrow that slices the fuel line just enough. The room erupts in blue heat as they turn and run for it, not stopping until they’re outside, not stopping until they feel something other than fire on their skin.

“Al Sa-Her is no more,” Nyssa’s declaration echoes over the comms, and as soon as she knows it’s safe, he hears Felicity’s voice. It sounds small and scares him more than anything he’s seen in the last two weeks.

“Oliver?”

“Yeah?” he croaks out, already racing for his bike as Nyssa gives him the go sign.

“Can you just come back, please?” she asks. “As quickly as you can.”

He’s moving before she’s done speaking, but the ride still feels like it takes forever. When he bolts into their headquarters, she only accepts his hug, locking him in tight and letting their hearts smash a few dozen bass drum beats against each other before pushing him back to arm’s length.

“I need two more minutes,” she says, eyes darting anywhere but his. “Go change.”

“Two minutes for what?” He’s still breathing heavy from the fight and the ride over, and now she’s not making any sense.

He tosses a helpless look at Digg, but his friend only nods heavily at him from where he’s sitting on the couch, with a sleeping Lyla and Sara leaned up against him. It is about 9 a.m. after all and most of them haven’t slept much in a week or two. Oliver vaguely remembers hearing Laurel and Thea sign off on his panicked drive over, but that doesn’t help him decode what’s going on.

“I just...can you just go change?” Felicity pleads with him, nearly wild-eyed, and it seems to be with something other than exhaustion. “I need two minutes and I need you to not be wearing that.”

He does as she tells him, throwing sweats and an old t-shirt on and storming back out to the main room at the same time she exits the bathroom, eyes wide, hands clutching at a plastic stick. He stops cold, suddenly wide awake.

“Is that...”

“I took two of them earlier, but I figured I should probably make it three because of the rule of threes, you know?” She’s babbling, but Oliver’s locked in on her hands, what’s in them, what she’s telling him it is. “But I wanted to wait until after tonight, because I didn’t want to jinx anything. And I just couldn’t imagine…”

“Felicity,” he cuts her off, but then loses the words himself, disbelieving, “are you…”

She nods at him with a hopeful, watery smile and his whole world changes.

“Oliver, I’m pregnant.”

* * *

He pulls her in his arms and kisses her once, hard, then disappears back to the locker room for five more minutes. When he comes back out, the sweats are gone, replaced with his backup suit. It’s a little wrinkled, but it’s charcoal grey with a blue tie and the one percent of her brain that isn’t totally overwhelmed notes that it still _totally_ works for him.

“Meet us there,” he tosses keys to Digg, who just continues nodding knowingly.

He grabs Felicity’s wrist, the one that’s not holding the pregnancy test, her _third positive,_ and nearly drags her up to the parking lot to her car, ignoring her litany of questions. She climbs reluctantly in the passenger’s seat and waits for him to speak, but he just guns the engine, flirting with the speed limit the whole way downtown. When he stops the car in a street spot in front of the city courthouse, her heart thuds hard in her chest.

“Felicity, this is me asking you.” His eyes are dead serious when he turns to her, and his voice sounds like nothing she’s ever heard before. “I will give you whatever kind of wedding you want. I will marry you in a synagogue or a Vegas chapel or on that sand dune on the beach where that family caught us making out. But will you please just...right now, be my wife?”

A tiny bitter part of her brain that’s scoffed at too many romantic comedies feels like it knows why he’s doing this, and she tells him so, but he breaks down the last of her defenses when he’s so emphatic about how she’s wrong.

“It’s not about obligation. It’s not about social norms or guilt. But it is about this baby,” he tells her, so earnest her heart grows three more sizes like the Grinch. “You’ve already given me a family. You’re my family, Felicity. You and Thea and John and Lyla and Sara and Laurel...”

“You’re my family, too,” she chokes out as tears start to fall.

“But this is...so much more. I think this is what comes next for me, Felicity,” he continues, and the look in his eyes reminds her of her Jewish mother babbling on about lighting up like Christmas. “Of all the things I’ve been, the best of me is going to be this baby’s father. I just want it to all be real. And I want you to be my wife.”

It’s not even worth blaming the hormones when she starts outright sobbing her affirmation into his shoulder. When she pulls it together enough to go inside, she fears her makeup is a lost cause. But for decades to come, he’ll always say that his favorite picture of the two of them is the one Lyla snaps on the steps of the courthouse that day.

“Because it’s just the two of us,” he tells her. “And we’d just been through another hell of a fight. But this time, our names are on the right paper and your rings are on the correct finger, and there’s a baby in your belly.”

“It was everything I thought I’d never have,” he says with the same wonder every time, “and it was finally real.”

* * *

They never plan on naming any of their children after people they’ve lost, but when Felicity panics in the minutes after their first baby girl is born, insisting through her sobs that their chosen name “isn’t her,” he calms first his wife and then his new pink bundle of joy with kisses and hushed assurances. Felicity actually takes longer to settle, the second he takes his daughter in his arms and looks down at her, she quiets, looking up with him with big blue eyes. She’s tiny and perfect and so much her mother, except for those eyes. Those he recognizes as his own.

Physically, her gaze is the same as his, but hidden in hers is something he doesn’t see often in the mirror. It’s a look that tugs at the fragile web of his memory, digging deep into some past happiness.

“Rebecca,” he blurts out breathlessly, and he hears Felicity gasp beside him.

“That’s her.” She nods when he looks over at her with wide eyes. “Rebecca.”

“That’s a heavy name for a little girl,” he murmurs mostly to himself, taking a moment to consider the tragic implications, the hundreds of dark marks that have seeped through the joyful memories of the woman he remembers. Malcolm Merlyn is dead, and this time it seems to be for good, but he still can’t fathom the thought of any of his darkness touching his daughter. But this wouldn’t be for Malcolm, this would be for Tommy.

“Oliver, she’s our kid.” That sentence alone is nearly enough to blast every dark thought from his mind. It’s one of the best thing’s Felicity’s ever said to him. And that bar is high. “She’s going to think she can do anything. And the worst part is, most of the time, she’ll probably be right.”

He’s too overwhelmed for coherent sentences, he just nods, wanting to stare at this precious thing in his arms, this latest miracle they’ve pulled off together, until his vision goes dark.

“Rebecca.”

* * *

They stop planning names after that, but when “it’s a boy” a few years later, Felicity’s pretty sure it’s a no-brainer. But Oliver’s eyes still go wide with wonder and about seven other things when she suggests it, and then even wider when she asks her follow-up question.

She knows he’s nervous, so she promises to take the lead, waiting until one night when they’re in the lair and Laurel is the last to clear out.

“Hey Laurel,” she asks with a shaky voice, hands rubbing her rounding belly, eyes darting to Oliver for strength. He nods steadily and she lets out a stuttered breath. “Can we talk to you about something?”

“What’s up?” Laurel starts out flippant, because she’s turned away at her locker, but when she gets a better look at Felicity and (mostly) Oliver’s body language, her eyes narrow warily. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing bad!” Felicity’s quick to assure for some reason. “We just, we uh...we found out, last week, that we’re having a boy.”

“Really!” Laurel’s eyes light up with genuine excitement. “That’s amazing!”

She moves to hug Felicity, who reciprocates stiffly enough that Laurel pulls back in concern. She doesn’t even make a move to congratulate Oliver, who’s currently fixated on an invisible spec on the floor.

“Okay, seriously, what’s going on?” she asks after thirty more second of awkward silence. “You guys like you’re freaking out. This is a good thing, isn’t it? Now you’ll have one of each.” Her tone is teasing, but her eyes are concerned.

“We wanted to...I wanted to ask…” Felicity stumbles, cursing her mouth for only the millionth time in her life. She didn’t think it would be this hard. But standing here, prying open this particular floodgate, it scares her silent.

“We want to name him Tommy,” Oliver’s voice rasps heavily beside her, but at least he gets the words out.

Laurel’s eyes go wide and Felicity desperately tries to read them.

“I just wanted to ask,” she scrambles, finding all her thoughts at once, so they come out in a rush. “I don’t know if that even something you’ve ever wanted, but if it was…I don’t want to take that from you. Or, if it would be too hard...”

This time Laurel’s hug is more of an attack, wrapping her up fiercely in a way that reminds Felicity so vividly of her sister. And this time, she absolutely returns it as her friend whispers a heavy “thank you” into her ear.

“Would you guys do me one favor though?” Laurel asks when they pulls back. “Will you take a suggestion on the middle name?”

Thomas Quentin Queen comes out screaming and doesn’t really stop until he’s eleven or twelve years old and takes to his namesake like a duck to water. From then, all his crazy energy, all his noble emotion, everything Felicity’s sweet little boy is, becomes devoted to becoming a police captain “just like Uncle Q.”

Quentin Lance serves fifteen more years as captain of the Star City force, the last five with an enthusiastic young deputy he affectionately refers to as “Tommy Two-Qs.” When the time comes to pass the torch, it’s difficult to say who sheds more proud tears at the ceremony. Felicity’s overwhelmed as she watches her baby boy get sworn in, but it’s Laurel who sobs audibly when her father announces her godson’s full name.

* * *

Their last baby girl comes out silent, with the biggest scowl on her face, and Felicity can’t help but laugh out loud when she gets a good look at her.

“You know who this is, right?” she asks Oliver, handing over their daughter with the easy confidence of a woman who’s done this twice now.

“Felicity, no,” he protests as soon as he sees it. “We can’t do that to her.”

“I’m not _doing_ anything,” she claims, feigning innocence. “Look at that face and tell me that’s not Moira Queen.”

“I can’t,” he sighs heavily, and his precious little girl glares up at him. “But I can’t….I’m going to have to call her Mo or something.”

His wife wrinkles her adorable nose and he can’t help but lean down and kiss it, even as she whines at him. “You are absolutely not calling her Mo.”

* * *

_A/N: So there we are. Now, if you so desire, you can go read[That’s All You](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4174755) as a follow-up piece about the family. If not, thanks for the ride. It’s been a beautiful road trip summer._


End file.
